On Wed, 10 Oct 2001 13:41:06 +0200, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Oct 2001 20:45:43 -0000, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
> <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> >All that
> >can be said about the form of the numeral "four" is that it looks as
> >if it were a derivative in *-wr, i.e. *kWet-wr, collective *kW(e)t-
> >wo:r, animate *kW(e)t-wor-es. All would be very nice if *kWet- were
> >an identifiable verb root, but apparently it ain't.
>
> Do you mean the ending of the verbal substantive (Hitt. -war, -wan-)?
>That's what I mean, with heteroclisy lost in the surviving fragments of the paradigm (presumably because the neuter was reduced to indeclinability).
I can find surprisingly little about this suffix in the handbooks I
have closest at hand (Szemerényi, Beekes). In Indic, I notice that
the forms are almost exclusively m., based on -n- (-va:, -vnas ; pl.
-va:nas), and that the -r form has been lost in the n. (-va, pl.
-va:ni), surviving only in the f. -vari:. In Hittite, on the other
hand, the -r has expanded to some oblique forms (Ab. -warraz, pl.n.
-warri), although *-n- is also firmly attested. As it is, I can find
not a shred of evidence for a form *kWetwVn-, which seems peculiar in
a paradigm that should have started out something like: [sg.m.
*kWetwo:n(s), f. *kWeturih2, n. *kWetwr.] pl. m. *kWetwones, n.
*kWetwo:r(h2), ord. *kWtun-[t]ó-. Besides the fact that there is no
verbal root *kWet-, as you say.
An alternative hypothesis, that *wor- in *kWet-wor-es is somehow
related to *wi(:)r- "man", is rendered attractive by the existence of
f. *kWete-sor- / *kWeto-sr-, where *sor- is the feminine suffix found
in Hitt. -(s)sara or in *swe-sor "sister", Lat. uxor (< (i)ug-sor ?)
"wife". It does have an Ablaut problem, though (wor ~ wi(:)r is not a
standard alternation).