It's a formalist expectation, Miguel. IE
inflections don't conform to this kind of agglutinative logic -- Loc.pl. is
not necessarily Loc. + pl. or pl. + Loc. Plurality makes new spacial
configurations possible: tree-Loc.sg. typically means "in a tree" or "under
a tree", while tree-Loc.pl. may be, say, "among trees". This may make all
the difference in the world if some of the locative forms derive
from postpositional phrases.
However, *-i does occur with *-su in the
thematic declension (*wlkWo-i-su). This suggests that *wlkWoi is the locative
proper, while *-su is a postposition. Greek *-si is clearly secondary, formed as
if to gratify your insistence that the Loc.pl. "should also have *-i". Its late
origin and analogical spread squares well with its untypical occurrence after
vowels and sonorants in the Dat./Loc.pl. of most declensions. Cf. the spread of
Lithuanian locatives in -e (pl. -s-e) < *-en.
As the locative of *-i/*-u stems (and
often of consonantal stems) is endingless, the Loc.pl. in *-su could be analysed
-- rather conjecturally, I admit -- as a zero-ending locative plus
*-su.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 9:22 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] IE *-su and the Nostratic "equational" marker
*-n :)
On Thu, 16 Nov 2000 05:24:55 GMT, "Glen Gordon"
<glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>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.
Of course I'm aware of that. I
just don't agree. The loc. sg. has
*-i, so the loc.pl. should also have
*-i. There's nothing "plural"
about the deictic *-u as opposed to
*-i.