Miguel wrote:
>I wouldn't say "*-h3 in thematic nouns, *-h1 in athematics".
Thematic
neuters have *-oi (*-o-ih1 ?), m./f. i- and u-stems may just as
easily
have had *-ih3/*-uh3. It looks more like "*-h3 for animate
nouns,
*-h1 for inanimates".
My question remains the same: Why posit both *-h1 and
*-h3 if *-h1 alone does the job? If inanimates originally differed from
animates, they did so by having *-i-h1 across the board (I don't wish to
speculate whether this final *-h1 in neuters is of analogic
origin). In consonantal masculine stems *-e (< *-h1e) is supported not
only by Greek and Baltic, but Celtic as well (OIr ríg '2 kings' < *re:ge),
which is why I prefer to reconstruct *-h1e (with vowel dropped postvocalically)
for the dual in general.
>In any case, what's the
diagnosis for reconstructing *-es AND *-oi AND
*-h2 with the same function in
the plural?
The same function? As you doubtless know, inanimates had no
real plural, *-(a)h2 being a collective formation (not restricted to inanimates,
by the way). ALL animate noun classes had plurals in *-es in PIE; *-oi is of
pronominal origin. Pronouns constitute a restricted lexical class with plenty of
idiosyncratic features; their morphology is basically non-nominal even if some
convergence has occurred in various branches.
Piotr