Miguel:
>I don't think Piotr said plural *-x (-*h2), because no such thing
>exists.
No plural *-x? Say wha? Then why do we have *-k^ont-x? Why does
the form underlying Greek have *-x following *tri- as if it were
used as a plural (<? *trei[x/es] k^ontx "three tens")? Where do you
think the lengthened inanimate plurals (*wodr/*wedo:r) come from, if
not from the loss of final *-x (< *wat:n/*wet:arx), dare I ask?
The plural *-x explains the development of *-k^ontx. It explains
the development of *okto:(u) & the dual *-u (< *ek^tax <
*kW(e)tWa-x). It explains *dwoi: (< *t:Wei-x) & the *-i: dual.
Finally, the plural *-x is the original meaning of the so-called
"feminine" ending since inanimate gender in general came to be used,
rather unfortunately by today's anti-discrimination morals :),
for these purposes. How could there _not_ be a plural *-x?
Oh, I see what you mean: Perhaps you insist on the newer
_thematic_ form *-ax? Whatever.
Miguel continues:
>Piotr's point was rather that the only viable starting point for an
>analogical process would have been a form like Greek tria:konta
>(with *h2, rather than *h1), not any of the attested forms of
>"twenty".
Yes! Yes! Yes! I agree, already! That's old news! I told you: it
was a smokescreen! Do read more carefully.
The _serious_ way it would work would be that all the decads, from
20 to 90, originally had one general plural *-x attached to them by
about 5500 BCE. The *-(e)ix dual ending was created later by analogy
with the word for "two" at the time, which was *t:Weix as well as
*t:Waix from what I can tell now. The latter form was then
misanalyzed as *t:wa-ix when it was originally *t:wei-x. In fact,
this *t:Waix form derives from the more original form *t:Weix
which had been confused with the corresponding enclitic
particle *t:Wa. (Now *t:Wa itself was modified from *t:We for
reasons which require me to type an entire essay just on the
origins and the cool uses of early ablaut in early/mid IE but
sufficed to say that in this instance it's a process similar in
respects to that posited for Old Japanese. If you're polite, I'll
make a thought-provoking post on the early ablaut topic.)
At any rate, when the analogical *-(e)ix dual came into being,
it was given to the word for "twenty" obviously. The final
consonant *-x disappeared eventually producing *-i: (or rather the
tr�s annoying *-iH1)
Now for more good news on the anti-*d front:
--------------------------------------------
I thought of yet another way in which the medial lengthening could occur
without *-d-. Not only do we have alternative theories like
the psychological "sense of loss" idea but we might also explain
it as a brutal contraction of the phrasal counterparts of the
decads:
SO *trei[es/x] k^ontx > *tri[s/x]k^ontx > *tri:k^ontx
AND *kWetwores k^ontx > *kWetwrsk^ontx > *kWetwr:k^ontx
BUT *penkWe k^ontx > *penkWe k^ontx
Who's to stop me from explaining it this way, huh?? :P
In this scheme, the length could come from both thirty AND fourty
spreading up the decads as well as down to twenty, producing
oddities like *penkWe:k^ontx and *wi:k^nti: as a result. Tada!
Throw those filthy *d's away - they aren't needed! Yous like?
>To which one can add that *trih2-k^omth2 is not necessarily
>the PIE Urform
Not _the_ PIE Urform, no, but certainly a possible dialectal form
showing the inanimate plural *-x in action, which somehow doesn't
exist :P
- gLeN
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