On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 03:05:17 +0000,
richard.wordingham@... wrote:
>At this point I would remind you of the hypothesis that *es started
>as a resumptive pronoun - 'Wolf, he hungry'. The Melanesian Pidgin
>English copula i- immediately comes to mind.
Another obvious possibility is that *es- comes from a verb meaning "to sit"
(cf. Spa. <ser> "to be" < Lat. sede:re "to sit"). As it happens, PIE *es-
still _is_ a verb meaning "to sit" (Hitt. active <es-mi> "I am", middle
<es-ha(ri)> "I sit"), which settles[*] it, as far as I'm concerned.
[*] *sed-, *sed-eh1-; *sod-éy-e/o- "to sit; to set" is probably another
derivation from the same root (*s-ed-).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...