From: elmeras2000
Message: 31153
Date: 2004-02-17
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
[...]
> > But the Eskimo //c// is
> >quite safe, really. It surfaces in the refl.dual and the
refl.plural
> >which end in -z&k/-t&k and -z&ng/-t&ng
>
> Is that du. *-c-g and pl. *-c-k?
Actually they were *-c-g and *-c-d. The old form of the pl. is
retained in Aleut (East -din, West -dis with -n/s from *-t from *-d
as usual). The form in -ng must reflect interference from added
material in the ergative, where we have Esk. -m&ng and Aleut -mang
from what must once have been *-m-c-d.
>
> >The
> >analysis of the personal markers as *-m, *-t, *-c is Bergsland's,
>
> That reads as if *-c is third person.
That is not what Bergsland wrote, and it is not what the languages
show. The reflexive is generally referred to a "fourth person" in
Eskimo grammar. But the odd man out is really the third person, for
the reflexive falls nicely into line with the other persons.
>
But I seem to be missing
> the data on the rest of the Aleut intransitive:
[...]
> (Please fill in the ?'s...)
The question appears to be a mistake: Aleut does not mark non-third
person object in transitive verbal endings. It just places an object
pronoun (and uses the intransitive form of the verb).
The Aleut intransitive verbal endings are (including final uvular
spirant -X of verbal stem):
1sg -q(ing) (1du -s) (1pl -s)
2sg -Xt 2du -Xtxidix 2pl -Xtxicix
3sg -X 3du -x 3pl -s
The pronouns are
1sg ting
2sg tin
2du tidix
1pl timas/tuman
2du ticix
I hardly dare inform you that the 2nd person pronouns are also used
of third person. It fooled me once, and I went through a crazy
period in which I reinterpreted IE s's all over the place. Now I
watch you doing much the same. It was a tough process to wise up and
slowly learn how this has come about in Aleut from a starting-point
in which the 2nd person and the reflexive were opposed to each
other. It is simply that *-n and *-ni (from earlier *-t and *-c
respectively) merged in Aleut, so 'you' and 'himself' coalesced. In
free use Aleut uses the old reflexive for the third person, and even
the old second persons of the other numbers by analogy, but in the
possessive inflection and in the verb there is a separate third
person comppletely matching that of Eskimo.
> Anyway, I don't think 2pl. -ci originates in the intransitive.
There is nothing really wrong with the intransitive -ci, however.
[...]
> >> In any case, I don't see an /s/ there.
> >
> >Right, this is underlying //t//.
>
> The question is then, does the reflexive -c- also have
underlying /t/?
No, that alternates in a different way, as seen in the second person
which has a marking with //t// as opposed to the reflexive which is
marked with //c//.
>
> Or, to put it more generally, perhaps Eskimo-Aleut */c/ is always
derived
> from **/t/. I have seen no reason yet to think not.
You *must* think not, for the two are in full-fledged opposition to
each other in Eskimo and Aleut. These are two different
morphophonemes, being opposed to each other on all levels of
analytic abstraction we can reach.
Jens