On Thu, 29 May 2003 00:13:12 +0000, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
<
jer@...> wrote:
>I take the traditional Uralic reconstruction *luke-k-
>me-k or *luke-t-me-k 'we read' (Finn. luemme) to represent a stem
>put in the plural and followed by the first person marker which is
>also put in the plural (or rather dual); the 2pl is *luke-k-te-k or
>*luke-t-te-k using the 2nd person marker.
Suhonen (in Sinor's "The Uralic Languages") explains the endings -mmek
and -ttek as fusion of the "present marker" *k with the plural
personal endings -mek and -tek. The argument is rather weakened by
the fact that this "present marker" is earlier identified as a *k that
appears only in the present _plural_ forms (as well as the imperative
and the negative, where it can have a different origin), but not in
the present singular. I think you are right in seeing it as a plural
(dual?) marker added to the verbal root/noun/whatever.
However, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think we find such
endings -mmVk/-mmVt/-mmVn elsewhere in Uralic outside of (a part of)
Baltic Finnic, which makes we wonder if we can reconstruct this
feature back to Proto-Uralic.
Uralic in general does not distinguish verbal endings much from
possessive suffixes, and the Baltic Finnic possessive suffixes are
reconstructed by Suhonen as:
sg.poss. pl.poss.
1 *mi *nni
2 *ti ~*Di *nti
3 *sen ~*zen *nsen
1 *mek *nmek > *mmek
2 *tek ~ *Dek *ndek
3 *sek ~ zek *nsek
These have merged in Finnnish as:
-ni
-si
-nsä/-nsa
-emme
-nne
-nsä/-nsa
It seems to me that verbal -mmek and -ttek can be explained in a
similar manner: there were separate forms in Proto-Baltic-Finnic (PBF)
for transitive verbs with singular, dual and plural object, something
like:
sg du/pl
1. -m > -n -k/t-m > -nn
2. -t -k/t-t > -tt
1. -mek -k/t-mek > -mmek
2. -tek -k/t-tek > -ttek
This is the way Samoyed and Ob-Ugric work, so it would make sense if
PBF had the same thing.
When the distinction between sg/du/pl. objects in the verb was given
up (as well as that between transitive and intransitive forms) the two
(three, if the intransitive was different) series merged as -n, -t/-d;
-mmek, -ttek.
>It is all in the function of the stem fo the verb. If the IE-Ur.
>verbal stems are properly agent nouns, which are of course nouns.
>And the object of a verbal noun may be expected to be in the
>genitive, so that is what I think the function of the *-m properly
>was. There are no functions of the Esk.-Al. "ergative" that cannot
>be easily derived from transparent syntactic structures in which it
>makes excellent sense as a genitive. In fact the interpretation of
>the "ergative" as a genitive completely strips it of the mysticism
>generally attached with that case function. It fits even better than
>one would perhaps expect, for the ergative is only used in
>constructions where the agent/owner and the patient/possessum are
>known, the note of topicality seen in the Uralic accusative is
>repeated here. I know too little about Kartvelian, but the mere
>existence of an /m/ in the ergative/genitive of that branch would
>appear to support the antiquity of this function of the morpheme.
>
>I would thus understand an IE sentence such as *H2né:r k^wónm
>gWhent 'the man kills/killed the dog' so as to properly mean "the
>man (is) the dog's killer".
The Eskimo (and Kartvelian aorist) constructions (with *-m in an
ergative role), would then be basically the same thing, but using a
passive verbal noun or adjective (passive participle): MAN-*m(a) KILL
(is/was) DOG : "the dog is/was the kill of the man" -> "The man
kills/killed the dog".
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...