--- In
cybalist@egroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
>
> >P.S. I would also be interested on peoples' ideas on the
> >Germano-Balto-Slavic "m" in the dat.ins. pl. cases, vs. the "bh" in
>the
> >rest of IE.
>
> Well, like you say, the wave model explains this well as a local
innovation.
> Perhaps influenced by the gen.pl.?
>
> - gLeN
>
Dear Glen,
Thanks for the suggestion. What I have always found perplexing
is the change /bh/ to /m/, which is not a regular phonological
transformation from IE in any of these languages (although we
see /b/ mutating to /m/ elsewhere in IE under certain situations,
such as Gk. 'brotos' or the OIr. 'mna^h', genitive of 'ben'.)
Thus, it doesn't seem to be strictly a phonological change,
but perhaps analogical, etc. Your suggestion of an influence
from the genitive plural is exactly the type of idea I was
looking for. Is there any reason, based upon semantics, that
the genitive should influence the dative or instrumental?
The genitive seems more closely aligned with the ablative
semantically (and was often combined with it in the daughter
languages). Of course, the /bh/ occurs also in ablative plurals.
Greg