Miguel:
>No they can't.
>[...]
>No they can't.
>[...]
>There's no genitive.
Thanks for the informative responses, Miguel. I was under the impression
that you were more interested in a debate rather than dishing out religious
mantra. Bon, dommage.
>>Bomhard states: "Etruscan also had an archaic genitive in -n (-an, >>-un),
>>which corresponds to the Indo-European genitive plural in *-om >>(also
>>with long vowel: *-o:m < *-o-om)."
>
>Evidence for this?
I have no direct Etruscan quotes available to me. As such, you may
disregard. It is not wholly relevant to the topic anyway.
>>Well then. I was under the impression that inanimate nouns did not >>use
>>*-m as accusative at all... I was under the impression that >>inanimate
>>nouns had a single nomino-accusative case. So what exactly >>are you
>>refering to?
>
>To the o-stems nom/acc. in *-om, what else?
Now Miguel. You stated: "It is interesting, however, that only the o-stem
neuters have the ACCUSATIVE *-m marker." (Capitalization is my doing) Please
phrase things more professionally next time. You meant to say
NOMINO-accusative which means that *-m may not be necessarily interpreted as
a true accusative. I'm not convinced that it was an accusative.
If we think of nouns in *-os as deriving from a misanalysed singular
genitive case, we might take note that the *-s disappears in other case
endings (because it is mistakingly viewed as a nominative). Likewise, if *-m
disappears in other case endings for nouns derived from the _plural_
genitive case, I'm not dismayed because it follows a pattern of case
misanalysis, this time confused with accusative *-m, and in the end, it
explains the origin of thematic roots fairly well. No need for clumsy
pronominal affixation.
This view of mine on the origin of Late IE thematic roots is also weaved
tightly into the nature of the "free" IE accent and the loss of final vowels
in Late MidIE. The two latter items help to reduce the seemingly chaotic IE
accent to a regular penultimate accent in earlier stages. Your ideas on
thematics in contrast appear loosely bound together, if indeed bound at all
- a million-and-one independant and even improbable theories that leave more
questions than answers. This is not the desired result of a good theory.
>>The lack of accusative *-m in inanimates is often used to >>demonstrate
>>that ergativity must have once existed in some early >>stage of IE (my
>>estimate: c. 12,000 BCE).
>
>Evidence for this? (Rhetorical question).
I'm not fond of rhetoric. Ask what you want or don't ask it at all.
Hans-Joachim Alscher goes into detail about his own theory of early IE
ergativity at:
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Hall/9766/indoeuro/contents.htm
I don't agree with all that he says, particularly how IE might relate to AA
which sounds more like fluff. I also don't think IE was ergative from 7000
BCE onward... which makes it strange to say that "preIE" was ergative. It's
like saying that pre-English had heteroclitic neuter declension. However,
his overall analysis is on the right track with a few modifications and
clarifications.
He presumes a declensional state in IE of...
animate inanimate
nominative *-s *-d
accusative *-m *-d
Of course, the general pattern should be rather:
animate inanimate
nominative *-s NULL
accusative *-m NULL
This pattern is still significant though, and his analysis of *-s (from
earlier *se "this, that") is correct. The addition of *-s is late. When
taken out we obtain an Early IE pattern:
animate inanimate
nominative NULL NULL
accusative *-m NULL
The only ancient suffix found here is the accusative which shows up in every
Steppe language family (including Etruscan) and even outside, in Dravidian.
Surely, *-m is very ancient then. If this is so, you have a problem because
the unmarked inanimate nomino-accusative in IE must be explained, as well as
the opposition between marked animate and unmarked inanimate accusative.
The most economical way I know of to explain this phenomena is to conclude
that the inanimate, for logical reasons, could never be the agent of an
action. Therefore use of *-m to distinguish the inanimate agent from the
inanimate patient was redundant when inanimate agents never existed. Simple.
That's the evidence, Miguel. Think about it. Roll over it with a cup of
coffee and a bagel tomorrow morning.
>You can call it nonsense, it's still the facts.
The facts you present about post-IE definite adjectives aren't nonsense. It
is your interpretation that is nonsense. The facts do nothing to support
your imaginative hypothesis. In the end, you have nothing but pure
speculation.
- gLeN
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download :
http://explorer.msn.com