First, for Mark O, I have the following phonemes in mind.
H1 = /?/
H2 = /x/ or /h./
H3 = /xW/ or /h.W/
I would like to change my mind about *ti-un and *ti-kun for the origin of
the Kartvelian pronouns *c^wen and *tkwen. I notice that I've mixed
pronominal sets (blah!) and it should be revised, with an added plural
ending *-i which I forgot, to *ti-muni and *ti-kuni. Thus preKartvelian
*ti-muni becomes something like Early Kartvelian *t^emeni (> *c^wen). We
then arrive at a suspicious case of Early Kartvelian intervocalic *m
becoming *w.
Another case would be: Early Kartvelian *xamicte "five" (< Sem. *xamis^tu) >
Kartvelian *xwict-. Then we have TWO cases of intervocalic *m > *w. Teehee!
BTW, I think the Nostratic pronominal suffix *-n might have been originally
used in sentences conveying an equation requiring the verb "to be" like:
*An kahuni.
"That's a dog"
As opposed to
*A kahuni.
"That dog"
Anyways, to the subject at hand...
Miguel:
>I realize that this analysis perforce leads to the conclusion that
>loc.pl. *-su likewise comes from *-sw-i (Grk. -si), leading thus to
>nom.pl. *-es < *-esw, explaining Arm. -k`, etc. etc., which you may
>not be prepared to accept.
Oh Miguel, are you not aware of T. Burrow and "The Sanskrit Language"? If I
remember correctly, his analysis of *-su is that it simply derives from the
plural ending *-es plus *-u, a "locative" suffix that arose purely by
analogy from *u-terminating collective inanimates plus the fact that many
adverbs, enclitics and the like, which end in *-u (or for that matter *-i as
in *bhi or *dhi) just happen to have a locative sense attributed to them.
The original locative case was unmarked and therefore identical with the
nominative (except for the added postfix like *bhi or *dhi). Etruscan has
/-thi/ for the locative which corresponds nicely to IE *dhi. External to
IndoTyrrhenian, the locative case is varied in Steppe languages.
So, the IE locative plural would have only ended with *-es like the
nominative plural at first. The suffixes *-i and *-u were tacked on very
late in the development of IE. This is why I think that reconstructing them
for a preIE stage is proposterous. Strangely, you refer to this endingless
locative in the preceding paragraph but are not fully aware of it.
>My analysis of the pronouns brings the two closer together, but I
>realize the whole thing may be hard to follow/swallow. Maybe I should
>try to explain it better.
Your *swesw > *yus- seems to explain it just fine... >:)
- gLeN
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