From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 39884
Date: 2005-09-07
----- Original Message -----
From: "glen gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] 1sg. -o: [was Re: IE Thematic Vowel Rule]
***
Patrick:
I have read the many speculations on this list regarding the meaning
of -*m(V).
On the part of some posters, I believe the range of the speculations is due
to their not having a familiarity with the IE literature that exists with a
bearing on the subject.
The major problem with an analysis of this morpheme (actually, morpheme_s_)
in PIE is that we have it with an Ablaut (including *Ø) vowel determined by
accentual and tonal considerations - not by a recognizable reflex from
pre-Nostratic *e(:), *a(:), or *o(:).
It is mostly not possible to separate the reflexes of pre-PIE *me, *ma, and
*mo _within PIE_ itself but we can identify them if we expand our
comparisons to related languages, like Sumerian and Egyptian, that preserve
evidence of the earlier vowel qualities.
Rather than make this into an impossibly long posting, I will not offer
proof for each of these identifications now but will justify the individual
reconstructions if further interested inquiries are made.
1) PN *me is the basis for first person pronouns in PIE; it means 'speaker';
2) PN *ma is the basis for nouns meaning 'place of':
a) This can be seen in nouns of place like Greek keuth-mó-s,
'hiding-place';
b) This is also the source of the PIE accusative (really an adessive)
in -*m;
1)) The most obvious need for such a formant is to indicate that an
animate noun is not the agent of a transitive verb but rather the patient;
addition of 'place (of)' _de-animates_ the animate noun to a noun of place.
NOTE: It is highly unlikely that pronominal elements were employed as case
formants in PIE; it simply does not make good semantic sense. Their
employment as devices for indicating number rather than case is, however,
quite common around the world's languages.
3) PN *mo is the basis for the superlative of adjectives; it means
'overall'.
4) PN *ma: is the basis for nomina actionis as in Old Irish cretem,
'believing'; it means 'intense activity'. This is not a feminine or
collective; the long vowel has been preserved from pre-Nostratic
Though *me: ('thin') and *mo: ('wander, human') may figure as the second
elements of PIE *CVC roots, they do not seem to be in use as suffixal
formants.
In the case of the much discussed neuters in -*om, we must imagine, using
*yéug- as an example, a sequence of
1) *yéug-, 'bind';
2) + *V, animate: *yugé-, 'binder';
3) + *m, 'place of': *yugém-, 'yoke'; and
4) with backward shift of stress-accent to root syllable: *yúgom-.
This is a simple scheme; and its very simplicity recommends it.
***