Whoops, I forgot one important question from Miguel:
>And why is the feminine ending not *-o:u then?
Because the feminine ending *-ax is the result of former
*-&x, a thematized variant that arose in early Late IE and
derived from the inanimate collective *-x. By the time
of Common IE (the IE that Anatolian comes from), *-ax
was used merely as an animate collective (Latin /agricola/),
not as a feminine per se.
During early Late IE, the feminine was unaccented *-&x
and the dual was accented *-ax > *-a:. Two different
endings. Since *x in *-ax was uvular, it disappeared. It
wasn't uvular in *-&x and thus survived. However, once
all uvular *x's disappeared, all *x's (*h2) came to be uvular
[h.] instead of plain [h], while all mediofinal *?'s (*h1)
became [h].
= gLeN
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