[tied] Re: Eggs from birds and swift horses (was: the palatal sham)

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

> On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 12:55:59 +0000, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> wrote:
>
> >>
> >> At the risk of repeating myself, I prefer to explain the *-s as

a

> >third
> >> person ending, derived either from [the nominative **su of] *s(w)

e

> >(which
> >> was a 3rd. person pronoun before it became a reflexive) or the
> >> demonstrative *so. The original aorist paradigm would have been:
> >>
> >> *déik^-m *dik^-més
> >> *dé(:)ik^-s *dik^-té
> >> *dé(:)ik^-s *dik^-é(:)r-s
> >>
> >
> >Now this reminds one of the state of Old Norse and Northern Old
> >English, which is usually described as something like 'the 3rd sg
> >took on the endings of the 2nd sg' which might adquately describe

the

> >situation, but doesn't make much lingustic sense to me.
>
> The converse (3rd. person influencing other persons) is known as

Watkins'

> Law. That doesn't mean that 2nd. person can never have an

influence on

> 3rd. or other persons (especially, I would think, in the imperative

and

> modal forms like conjunctive/optative). My paradigm above reflects

neither

> Watkins' law nor anything similar to the Old Norse situation: the

ending

> *-s is here simply the fortuitous merger of the original 2nd.

person ending

> **-tu and the original third person ending **-su.
>

I am curious as to what universe you are living in: are 'fictitious'
and 'fortuitous' related?

Torsten