> That was why I tried to put emphasis on the fact that the suffix -
i
> originally wasn't a "locative ending", but a hic-et-nunc enclitic,
> which developed into a more specific locative sense in the noun,
but
> retained the more original meaning in the primary verb ending. In
> other words, not: locative -i -> PE -i, but rather: Hic-et-nunc -
i ->
> 1. Locative. 2.PE.
Blame it on my background in computer science that my parser
exclaimed 'type error' here. This is because I saw -i as a locative
ending, in which case it has type <noun> -> <adv> (actually <noun>
-> <prepositional phrase (PP)>, but a PP is syntactically an
adverb). Seeing it as a "hic-et-nunc particle" (and from what other
languages is such a beast known?) is syntactically just a relaxation
of type (expanding it to also at the same time be typologically a
sentence adverb), which some would see as a cop-out. It's the
standard solution, it works (sorta), and I don't like it.
There are some tings that puzzle me:
Hittite sentence connectives:
nu
su
ta
ya
Armenian demonstrative stems:
n-
s-
d-
Present secondary singular endings:
-m
-s
-t
and it occurred to me that
*-nw- > *-m-
is possible.
Sanskrit demonstrative stems (some of them)
s-/t-
sy-/ty-
sv-/tv- ?
y-
Does that mean
*s-y- -> sy-
*s-w- -> sv-
?
Another thing:
3rd sg active -ti , -i locative?
3rd sg m./pass. -tor -er locative?
I smell a rat here. It seems somehow the verb suffixes migrated in
from Wackernagel's position. I'm unable to formulate a full theory
at this point, though.
By the way, if I separate the initial consonant from demonstrative
pronouns and call them/identify them as sentence connectives,
it'sonly fair that I should be able to explain the *kW- of the
relative/interrogative *kW- pronouns. I think I can:
First note that one always get from the relative sense to the
interrogative one: from
'do you know who VP?'
elliptically to
'who Vp?'
Notice that in hittite the kW- pronoun comes almost at the end of
the sentence: 'so-and-so do whosoever (kWiski)' "whosoever does so-
and-so" (in laws etc). It is tempting to assume that the -kWe "and"
post-enclitic (wanderword?) which is found even in Etruscan was used
in a sort summing-up, nominalising way, VP -> S, so to speak, in the
manner of the Basque sentence-nominalising suffix (I think it was -
ko, but I might confuse it with another one).
So, what I'm saying in a manner that surpasses the use of "hic-et-
nunc-particles" with respect to fuzziness, is that the relative
pronouns consist of the nominalising suffix -kWe plus the "soft
innards" of the demonstrative pronouns -os, -om etc.
Torsten