Jens:
>Well, there may be little point in quibbling over that. The truth itself
>may be more complicated and less principled than the solutions we see.
Yes, but as long as we don't try to rush into complicated solutions ahead
of Occam's Razor, we'll be okay.
>But it's a strange academy that puts up a case-marker /u/ to explain an
>element seen in all cases. [...] We need it for nominatives like *tu:,
>*wey, *yu:s and for accusatives like *twe, *usme/*wos.
Yes, this academy that you and Miguel belong to is very strange indeed.
If you see padded walls in this academy, perhaps you may have cause
for alarm. :)
I seem to have lost track admist the wild theorizing as to what forces
us to conclude that this *u is seen in all or any cases in the first place.
The *u in *tu: is simply part of the root unless there is ample reason
otherwise. There is no ample reason so far. Same for *yu:s. The word
*twe doesn't even have *u but that doesn't stop you people from
theorizing that it once had.
2ps *tu: is from a zero-graded Mid IE *ta:u that further derives from
Steppe *tu from which Uralic, Altaic and EskimoAleut and inherit their
pronouns, afaic.
I've said that 2pp *yu:s is from MIE *ya:u "the group" and is unique
to IE. Since external to IE and even in the IE ending *-te, we can readily
see the form *ti or *ti-t.
Why must this be so? Because there is nothing forcing us to assume an
odd sound change of *tW > *y/*w/*tw that surely cannot be directly
attested in any other world language, even if it is deemed "possible".
In contrast, *y < *y is the null hypothesis that has not yet been
properly discredited. Further, the specific process of pronominal
replacement with noun phrases like "the group, the people" can
be seen in other world languages. Even Miguel has offered the
example of Braz.Portuguese /a gente/ "the people", used for "we",
against himself. This is a far better alternative to assuming a three-way
sound change, no matter how solid those rules may seem to be
to you and Miguel.
>That disqualifies the u- or w-element as a case-marker.
Occam's Razor alone disqualifies it.
>Perhaps it expresses what all the forms have in common, or the independent
>status that sets them off from the verbal endings.
Or perhaps a vowel is just a vowel. We don't go assuming that
-o is or was once a morpheme in Ingush /so/ "I" and /hwo/ "you"
just because they share the same vowel, do we? This kind of
reasoning, if we can really call it that, is sheer lunacy.
Jens to Miguel:
>I do not know on what basis *swey has been posited in the first
>place. If it has been invented to account for Celtic *swi:(s) 'you
>(pl.)', there was no need:
The Hittite form, from what I had read, was simply the result of
*y- being fricativized to /s^/.
= gLeN
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