[tied] Re: To be or not to be... or to have.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> 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-).
>

Southern quotes someone as proposing a PIE w-preformative alternating
with /h1/ in *h1es- "be" / *wes- "stay the night".

Torsten