From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 6972
Date: 2001-04-04
>Miguel:It did not behave as a plural when it comes to verbal agreement.
>>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 >theAs I said, my current theory is that it comes from the diminutive
>>feminine.
>
>How so? Where does the feminine come from then?
>You missed something again. I said that final consonantal *-x disappearsSo if *-x became lengthening (*h1, in fact), where does *-h2
>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, theYou were confusing the collective (*-h2) with the dual (no *-h2). It
>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?