Re: [tied] Re: Pronouns again

> 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".

Yes, this analysis is inescapable on the basis of Eskimo morphology (and
has always been common opinion). The -v- which is written e.g. in the
older Greenlandic orthography (Kleinschmidt <uvanga>, now <uanga>) is a
simple glide of no independent status. To clinch the argument: If qam-
'inside' forms *qam-na 'the one inside' (still qamna in West Eskimo,
Greenlandic has old orth. <qavna>, now <qanna>), and 'this/that one' is
u-na, then qam-a-ni (older Greenl. orth. <qamane>)'in there' must be
parallel with u(v)-a-ni (older Greenl. orth. <uvane>, now <uani>), which
means making the last form *u-a-ni.

> 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 'uvanga' but compared to the Sirenik 'menga' 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.

The phonetic development from PEsk. *ua- to the varying initials of the
individual dialects (which include xwa-, hwa-, wa-, uwa- and even Sirenik
ma-/m&-) have been spelled out in a masterful paper by the Japanese
Eskimologist Miyaoka which appeared in 1976. The derivatives from *u-a-
of demonstrative meaning also begin with m- in Sirenik: mani or m&ni
'here'.

> On pages 77-81 Greenberg reconstructs a Eurasiatic 1sg pronoun
> e-ghe/a-m built from an emphatic focusing e- "that", + ghe
> ~gha "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.
> Amazing how many ways a short word can be chopped up!

Yes, it just appears the matter was not "Greenberg-ripe". I think
Greenberg's oeuvre deserves our highest respect, heavily flawed though it
remained. At the very least it shows us where comparative and
reconstructive work within the individual families still has work to do.
It must be an ideal goal of IE studies that the protolanguage can be used
by non-specialists for external comparison. The formula for 'I' you quote
looks more than anything like a crude transposition of Sanskrit ahám into
some very ancient garb. And, of course, Skt. -ám is no very good candidate
for a morpheme of 1st person, since the other persons also have it: tu-ám
'thou', ay-ám 'he', and since it fails to turn up safely in other IE
branches.

Jens