Re: [tied] Re: Pronouns again

Jens:

>The Eskimo part is another point where I agree with Glen.

I'm on a roll... Luck be a lady tonight!

>The ending -nga is undoubtedly related to the 1sg possessive marker *-ka.
>The nucleus must be the /k/ which, by general rule, would be nasalized in
>word-final position (its Aleut counterpart is in fact -ng). I have had
>grave trouble making out why there is nasalization also in the
>intransitive ending -nga.

I would have guessed that the Aleut ending shows the original state of
affairs and that -a has been secondarily added to Inuktitut -nga.

>It begins fine: [...] But can *-g^ mean 'I'?

No. The interpretation of *-g- as an already existant emphatic particle
is logically sufficient, as opposed to an idle connection with PEskimo
*-ka.

>The PIE morpheme corresponding to Esk. -nga (or *-k) is *-H2,

While I agree with this connection, there are approximately some 6000 to
8000 years of prehistoric development to explain for both language
families. It would seem to me that Proto-Boreal, ancestral to EskimoA,
CKam, Yukaghir and Uralic, would have had two distinct 1ps endings
marking subjective and objective: *-m and *-N.

>Could the front vowel have palatalized the old velar?

The *g^ in PIE is not palatalized. It's a plain velar. It is only
palatalized in later satem dialects.

Plus, I feel that *eg- was in fact a _verb_ signifying "to be here",
which is the reason for the enclitic *ge which served merely as a filler
consonant to go between the stem and the pronominal ending *-o:.

>Inflected form of 'I' begin with *m- in IE. Curiously, also the forms of
>the dual and plural reflect /m/ (in part changed to /w/ by rule, and in
>part apparently dissimilated to /n/ which looks more like a spontaneous
>event). In none of these cases is the consonant in word-final position.

Was there not an athematic, non-indicative 1ps *-m? How did that get
waved away?

>It may be note that PIE has other cases of an interchange of /m/ and
>/H2/. One could cite the roots *gWem- and *gWeH2- 'come, go' [...]
>there are also *drem-/*dreH2- 'run' and another *drem-/*dreH2- 'sleep'.

Given that there are many other verbs with an optional *-H2-, I think not.


- gLeN


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