[tied] Re: Pronouns again

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...>
wrote:

> > Jens: [...]
> >>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.
>
> Sure, that's one of the two possibilities I spelt out in the mail

you're

> replying to. It's the only one I have published. Nice to know it's

the

> better one.
>
> >>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.
>
> Well, many things are logically sufficient without being true.

There are

> often *many* posibilities. Even so, I fail to see the idleness of
> highlighting the similarity between Eskimo {'there' + -k} and PIE

{'there'

> + -g^} both meaning 'I'. Most true cognates look less similar.
>
> >>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.
>
> Was there not a *-K also? I find it much harder to find an *-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.
>
> The three PIE velar series which are not in complementary

distribution in

> any arrangement. There is no way they can have been created

secondarily

> after the dissolution of the protolanguage.
>
> > 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:.
>
> The *-o: is only found in Italic and Greek; a number of other

languages

> point to a shorter form, in fact to exactly what remains if we

leave out

> the *-o: of ego:. That makes it unattractive to locate the

message "first

> person pronoun" in this part. Alas, I am not endowed with a sense

to make

> me feel which part of a word means what. There may be others of my

kind;

> could you teach us your tricks?
>
> >>Inflected forms 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 did not, I explicitly conceded that this item does not fit the

picture.

> It all boils down to the question whether what looks like three

series (1)

> *-k/*-m-, (2) *-k/*-m-, (3) *-m/*-m- can be assumed to reflect a

single

> series *-k/*-m-, with paradigmatic levelling being responsible for

the *-m

> of (3).
>
>
> >>It may be noted 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.
>
> I see no basis for this statement. What exactly is it that you do

not think?

>
> Jens

As far as I can tell, this attempt at analyzing 'ego' end up with an
unexplained -g'- which also means "I". Next question (same question):
where did -g'- come from?

Torsten