Jens:
>Why would a dual-looking word meaning 'eight' correspond to a singular
>candidate-for-borrowing meaning exactly 'four' by accident?
The real question is "Why are you leaping so far ahead of the game?" Who
said *otxo- was conclusively borrowed from IE? Even if so, it's highly
possible
that the word would have been borrowed late in IE when the dual had
already taken hold and when "eight" was seen as containing a dual ending.
>You may believe it to be accidental, but you cannot demand that I follow
>you in that.
What I demand is that if you're going to make imaginative assertions, you
better damn well back it up. Please support this conviction of yours that
Kart *otxo- derives from IE *okto:u with something more substantial.
>If the borrowing means 'four' it must have been taken before the creation
>of the numeral *kWet-wor-es, fem. *kWete-sr-es which is as old as anything
>we can even begin to analyze (and then some).
Yes, but my thoughts on the early form of *kWetwores are different.
Certainly, *-es is the plural, leaving *kWetwor-. The "feminine" form is
nothing
but *kWet(w)e- plus the same feminine ending seen in *swesor (which doesn't
suggest that early IE had a feminine any more than English marks feminine
gender with /-ette/). I think that these two forms show that there was
once a Mid IE modifying form of the numeral, *kWetWe, used alongside
*kWetWen (later *kWetWer), just as a modifying form *t:We (> *dwo-) was
used alongside *t:Wa-xe (> *dwo:u).
>On what grounds? How can the "bh-case" take the shape -bhya:m [...]
Read my lips: The dual was at most a _thousand_ years old BY THE TIME of
Reconstructed IE... which means that I accept a limited dual system by the
time IE dissolved. But my point is that it wasn't fully developped because
it
didn't have sufficient time to resolve itself out. This is why, if there is
secure
links between the dual of Anatolian languages and those of other IE
languages,
the links are expected to be few and far between. Anatolian represents an
earlier stage of IE and it's no wonder that it should represent a weaker
dual
system as well.
- gLeN
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