Proto-Slavic had a large system
of deictic and spacial (proximate/distal) pronouns, rather like Latin. They
included the sets *onU, *ona, *ono; *tU, *ta, *to; *ovU, *ova, *ovo. They are
all used in Modern Macedonian to mark both definiteness and distance, e.g.
knigana 'that book over there', knigata 'the book' (as in Bulgarian), knigava
'this book here'. The neuter counterparts are -no, -to, -vo, and masculine ones,
-on, -ot, -ov.
The origin of *on- is uncertain. I think it
is ultimately related to *h1on- '(the) one' and the suffix *-h1on (I have
written about this on Cybalist), but it's more like my personal opinion than
anything standard.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 1:22
PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Daci
-on- ??
Now *that* I find intersting. It could be
analysed both as Slavic
<on> "he", and as the PIE suffix *-on- of
the Latin <cat-us>, <cat-on-
> example. May I inconvenience
Piotr with a request for an exposition
of the standard etymology of Slavic
<on> "he"?