Miguel:
>Yes. The collective is not a plural. Neither is it a dual.
The collective is a plural in deed and ergo relates to the dual nonetheless.
>And I don't even believe collective *-(e)h2 has anything to do with >the
>feminine.
How so? Where does the feminine come from then?
>The dual endings are *-oh3 ~ *-(e)h1, the collective ending is
>*-(e)h2, and the feminine endings are *-ih2 ~ *-(e)h2(i) [< >*-(y)(e)h2 ?].
> They all have different origins. For the dual, this is obvious: *-ih2
>(your *-ix, I presume), should, as I said, >have given Greek -ia, not -i:,
>in the n.du.
You missed something again. I said that final consonantal *-x disappears
before Common IE (which also explains the lengthening of the inanimate
collectives like *wedo:r < *wedor-x). Thus *-ix must become *-i:. It was
only *-ix in the previous Late Mid IE stage, NOT in Common IE so it can't
possibly become Greek /ia/, only /i:/. There _is_ a dual in *-i: so you are
arguing against a brick wall here. A later *-i-x exists in Common IE, yes,
but this is a composite suffix unrelated to the former. And certainly, the
IndoAnatolian stage of Common IE had no feminine nouns, only animate and
inanimate ones, so I don't quite follow your method of reasoning anyway. Why
aren't we speaking of the earlier animate-inanimate stage that is known to
have existed where "feminine" suffixes hadn't existed yet?
And where do you get *-oH3? If this is about *ok^to:u again, the dual *-u is
another analogically derived suffix from "two" as well as "eight" because
previous *-o: had become *-o:u, or so says I.
In the next post, Miguel writes:
>I don't think "cow(s)" were commonly referred to in the collective
>(*gwo:us is animate/feminine,
Cows can only by definition be feminine, Miguel :) This is regardless of the
animate, but later largely "masculine", *-s.
>[...] so why should *gwna(i)h2 be a collective? The "diminutive"
> >explanation works much better.
Here's the basic line of development I've thought up:
collective general feminine &
inanimate > inanimate > inanimate (neuter)
The association of inanimacy with femininity would obviously tie in well
with the apparent patriarchal nature of the IndoEuropeans. Your *gwnax is
not a collective so much as a "human inanimate", dare I say.
- gLeN
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