From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2734
Date: 2000-06-27
In response to Giuseppe Pagliarulo’s question (#2733)
The IE reflexive pronoun had the following forms:
Acc. emphatic *se:m, enclitic *s(w)e
Gen. *sewe
Dat./Loc. emphatic *sebHei, enclitic *s(w)oi
Abl. *s(w)e:t
Possessive *s(e)wos
The underlying morpheme seems to be *s(e)u-/*swe- ‘(one’s) own’, hence ‘familiar, private, characteristic’, etc. As a social term it meant ‘of one’s own family’, hence its occurrence in *swe-so:r ‘sister’, *swe-kuros ‘father-in-law’ and *swe-kru: ‘mother-in-law’ (whatever the second element). It underlies Germanic *swe:s ‘one’s own; property’, *sibjo: <*sebH-j-a: ‘relationship, alliance’, Slavic *sobU ‘personality, character’ < *sobH-os, Latin sue:sco ‘get accustomed’, Greek etHos ‘custom’ < *swedHos, and many other words in various IE languages. It may also be present in the verbal root *s(e)ux- ‘give birth to’ (cf. *suxnus ‘son’), though this connection is less secure. Even more speculative is Szemerényi’s reconstruction of **su: ‘family, clan’ as ancestral to all of the above, or Kenneth Shield’s analytic dissection to the bitter end: *swe < **se-we- ‘demonstrative + indirect speech marker’ (needless to say, they can’t both be right).
Piotr