Re: [tied] Battle of the cow

On Fri, 02 Nov 2001 00:36:11, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>1) The plural suffix may not have been at one time necessary
> in conveying the plural as it later was in Late IE, hence
> the "singular" form may conceivably have been used in the
> plural. Secondly, Piotr wrote it with *o:, so perhaps you
> should talk to him.

Well, that was in the context:
"nom.pl. *gWo:wes < *gWoh3-ow-es, more or less as reflected in Old
Indic."

That's to say, with a laryngeal to effect the lengthening (which is
attested AFAIK only in Old Indic, and can just as easily be from
laryngeal-less *gWowes with Brugmann's Law > ga:vah.).

Without laryngeal, the nom.pl. just doesn't lengthen like the nom. sg.

>2) Alright, but this case is not only the precursor to the
> IE nominative, but also the vocative and the later locative.
> To convey the locative, this "oblique" case was used with
> postpositions like *dëi or *bëi. Should I continue to
> use "nominative" and risk confusion with the Late IE sense
> of the term?

Unfortunately, there's not a good term in common use. You could use
"strong form", or "non-oblique". For the neuters, maybe "absolutive"
is a good idea (but for animates, it's confusing because it implies
the existence of an ergative). I suspect the Latin term was "casus
rectus", but I cannot confirm that. "Rect."?