Re: [tied] Depth, det, etc.

I agree with you as regards the relation between *-es- stems and *-eto- adjectives, though I remain unconvinced that the "-th" abstracts derive generally from the latter. The required middle term (*-eto-) is postulated in your argument but unattested -- at least I can't think of a convincing example (*nemos and the like are nouns, not adjectives). For example, *newotah2(t)- (or whatever the correct reconstruction) goes with good ol' *newo- rather than *newes-/*neweto- (unknown to me). Examples like Lat. tempesta:s or senecta:s show *-tah2-t- combined with bare consonantal stems, and note Gk. barute:s (baru-te:t-) = baros (bar-es-) and batHute:s = batHos. Sanskrit has guruta: as well, which confirms my suspicion that the original suffix was simply *-tah2-.

BTW, in addition to the formation being discussed we have *-osti- (as in Slavic and Hittite), also with *-o-.

To sum up, I think that *dHeubetos, if correctly reconstructed, is not an abstract noun ('depth') -- those are different in Albanian -- but a substantivised adjective ('the deep'. This should probably presuppose an *-es-neuter (*dHeubos 'depth'), as in your theory.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 10:39 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Depth, det, etc.

Hello to you, Piotr - and everyone else! I would say exactly the opposite: The suffix *-eto- is related to the stem suffix of s-stems, cf. *némos 'reverence' : *nemeto- 'holy' (Skt. námas- and Gaul. nemeton, resp.). The thematic forms simply forms an adjective from the s-stem noun (cf. the adj. meaning of Skt. yajatá- 'adorable, godlike'). The alternation -t-/-s is as with the 2nd person marker, so the two "dentals" are originally identical. An s-stem can be used to express a stative noun derived from an adjective, as Gk. báthos 'depth', báros 'weight'. Thus far, we would expect *dheub-etó- to mean 'depth-related'; of this, *dheub-étaH2 is the collective 'depth-related things, d.-r. situation, depth'. The common o-stems then caused a change of suffixal form to give *-ota:- in some of the languages. The full line of derivation and phonological alternation back to the period of the beginning of ablaut still needs to be worked out, but this must be part of the picture. We still may meet, if the living process of forming collectives with accent shift worked on a pre-ablaut *-eté- after it had become *-oté- (on its way to *-té- which never came about) and changed it into *-óte-, ntr.pl. *-óte-H2. Jens