Marc V:
>Beekes did notice the animate meaning of the nominative -s originally
> >AFAIR. Why not 1) -s = genitive, 2) also used for animate ergative, >3) =
>nominative (sing. & plural)?
You're confusing my brain, which ain't hard to do, btw :) Maybe you could
demonstrate a sentence pattern of some kind (like: "subject-ABS object-ERG
verb") and show how this can evolve in a semantically happy way over time,
from the ergative stage to the nominative stage, as you suggest. You still
haven't given an explanation on how one can derive two or three endings of
very different functions (*-s, *-es, *-�s) from a single proto-ending (*-s)
without practicing alchemy on the side. :P Why do you insist on a common
origin for them all? They may not have one.
I do agree that at some faraway stage of pre-IE there existed an ergative
case. However, I am under the impression that the accusative *-m is its
descendent, not the nominative *-s.
- gLeN
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
http://www.hotmail.com