Jens:
>It may cause you a fatal heart attack, but after much considereation I will
>have to agree with you on this point.
I... I... ah... I'm... I can't... hunh?? I need to sit down <:)
>What are you talking about? Are you hinting at a rule opposing animate
>and inanimate by vowel insertion in the suffixes of the latter to form the
>former?
I hint strongly. It's a rule in an early Late IE. We have an inanimate
collective *-x versus an animate collective *-&x (> *-ex > feminine *-ax).
We also have inanimate *-n versus animate *-&n (> -&:n- > *-on-).
>But here the chronological point I would accept is being rejected. I see
>no way of reconciliation on this basis.
Well then, what is, in jotform, the chronology you have in mind? List it
out in chronological order. Perhaps then we can see where we diverge
because I feel I'm not fully understanding your view.
You ask "Why does the gen.sg. in *-aH2-os which belongs to the class of
'a:'-stems whose stem-forming part consists of the thematic vowel *-e/o-
+ the collective marker *-H2 not reduce the gen. desinence to the
zero-grade form /-s/, given the rule that everything following the thematic
vowel appears in its reduced form?" I assume you're thinking of other
strange thematic stems like nominative *yugom with genitive *yugo-syo,
however these stems are a little different. Nouns like *yugom or *wlkWos
are derived from case forms -- They are genitival derivations originally.
The feminine, or anciently "animate collective", was never a case-derived
stem nor could be confused as such. Therefore, there was never any confusion
when declining *ax-stems as there were with stems with case endings *-os and
*-om already attached, easily confusable with the attachment of further case
endings of the nominative, genitive and accusative endings.
In other words, the feminine genitive in *-ax-os is expected. It is the
genitive in genitival words like *wlkWos and *yugom that are unexpected. Had
there been no confusion of their endings, we might expect **wlkWes-os(yo)
and **yugom-os(yo). Instead, the stem *wlkW&s- (with nominative *wlkW&s-s >
*wlkW&:s and accusative *wlkW&s-m) was reanalysed as *wlkW&:-s
in the nominative and given an analogical accusative *wlkW&:-m. The
normal genitive in *wlkW&s-as died out as a reanalysed *wlkW&-s(-y&) took
its place. Similarly, a previous stem *yug&m- (NOMACC *yug&:m,
GEN *yug&mas) was reanalysed in the nominoaccusative as *yug&:-m with
the new genitive *yug&-s(-y&).
One must keep thoroughly in mind that these particular noun stems are
recent formations and cannot be expected to follow the "expected" pattern
of declension that we find better attested in *kwon- or *pod-.
- gLeN
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