Me and Miguel go at it again:
>>Numbers were not originally animate stems.
>
>They were. Proof: trei-es and kwetwor-es, with anim. pl.; duo:(u)
>and ok^to:(u) with anim. du.
But this proves nothing. The plural *-es has been added on at a
late date. The penultimate accentuation on both "three" and "four"
dates the attachment to Late Mid IE or earlier. However, *-es could
have been attached no earlier than Old IE, since the previous
IndoTyrrhenian stage had accent on the _initial_. Our *kWetwor- can
only derive from Late MIE *kWatWer or **kWetW�re due to strict accentuation
and vocalic rules.
The first option *kWatWer implies strongly that it was inanimate
since it ends in *-r. The latter option **kWetW�re looks like an
animate form ending in *-ere (the actor suffix) alright.
However, by opting for the latter, we lose the connection with
Tyrrhenian *xotta in favour of some remote AA connection that
frankly doesn't look promising at all with your crazy rules.
The numeral *neun also looks inanimate since it appears to derive
from *neur (Etr. nurph), again, ending in *-r. Even if it had ended
in *-n or *-m, it would still look inanimate. Both "two" and "eight"
probably derive from stems ending in *-x (used for inanimates).
And let's face it, *penkWe doesn't look like an animate stem at all.
It has absolutely no animate suffixes to speak of.
So in all, these numerals look _inanimate_ in design even if they
may have become animate stems in the more recent past. Further,
there are many stems denoting a collection of things that happen to
be inanimate.
>>Stems in *-o:r are the result of *-r (inanimate) + *-x (plural).
>
>No. They are animate, and singular. What's inamimate and collective
>about father, mother, sister, actor, donor...?
You got to be joking. "Father" and "mother" end in *-xte:r, not
*-o:r, you fool. "Sister" ends in *-sor, something we just talked
about. That's all entirely different from *-o:r as in
*wodr/*wedo:r "water(s)". The length is caused by a former *-x
that has been attached AFTER *-n>*-r. At any rate, there is no
*-x in *kWetwores, nor is there *-es in *wedo:r.
>Throwing away Dolgopolsky doesn't make the Afro-Asiatic, Uralic and
>Altaic words I quoted go away. His reconstruction (*l(e|�)pV) is
>wrong (as I believe is Sammallahti's (*d�(bd|pp)V)).
No, throwing away Dolgopolsky doesn't make those words go away. It's
his hideous methodology and overall lack of common sense that makes
them go away. I'm not saying that Dolgy didn't love puppies and
go to church every Sunday. I'm just saying that he should have
become a fashion designer, that's all.
- love gLeN
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