Re: Pronouns again

From: Daniel J. Milton
Message: 19317
Date: 2003-02-27

As an innocent trying to follow the learned discussion on
Eskimo *u-a-nga "I", if I'm correctly summarizing Rasmussen
(19314), he breaks it down into /u-/, a deictic pronoun, /-a/ an
emphatic, and -nga "I, me" "related to the 1sg possessive marker *-
ka".
The only book on my shelf that I thought might have anything
relevant is Greenberg's "Indo-European and its Closest Relatives".
On page 66 I was pleased to find the Greenlandic 'uva©¯a¡¯, but
compared to the Sirenik ¡®m¬ï©¯a¡¯, where ¡°m¡± is the good old Eurasiatic =

1sg, with Greenberg¡¯s comment ¡°one is reminded of the m ~ b
variation in Altaic and Japanese¡±. I take it he is assuming it¡¯s
obvious that v = b (and in turn = m), putting the core of the word
where Jens just has a syllable break.
On pages 77-81 Greenberg reconstructs a Eurasiatic 1sg pronoun
e-ĝhe/a-m built from an emphatic focusing e- ¡®that, + ĝhe ~ĝ=
;ha ¡®am¡¯,
+ -m ¡°I¡±. The middle part is a pronoun base GE, whose ¡°original
meaning, which we may as an initial hypothesis characterize as a
copula, will become clearer in the course of the discussion¡±. I¡¯m
afraid it doesn¡¯t for me.

Dan