Re: [tied] The 1ps pronoun *ego:... or is it *eg?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 5:07 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] The 1ps pronoun *ego:... or is it *eg?


> What on
> earth does *eg come from, by the way? Certainly not from *e-ge, an
> emphatic form of *e "here" since we _still_ have to conclude that
> the word has eroded from *e-ge to *eg.

Well, this is not impossible. The Slavic languages have the emphatic enclitic /z^e/ < *ge (cf. Gk. ge as in <ego:ge> '(as for) me'), which ordinarily loses its /e/ after a vowel and keeps it after a consonant. This has nothing to do with regular ablaut and everything to do with syllable-structure adjustment in phrasal phonology. It's one of those cross-linguistically common things that may happen anywhere at any time.

Piotr