Richard almost gets it:
> Or are you merely saying that WOLF-NOM-yo came to be perceived as
> WOLF-GEN-yo, an unambiguous alternative to WOLF-GEN, which was
> homonymous with WOLF-NOM?
Not quite but close enough. In reality, the *s in *-syo was
originally a _genitive_ but in our analysis (which should keep
the IE speaker in mind), without knowing whether the *s here
is nominative or genitive (just like the IE speaker wouldn't
have known), we can interpret it either way.
If we interpret WOLF-s as a nominative, it's fine and the semantics
work. If we interpret WOLF-s as a genitive, it's still fine and
the semantics work. What cannot be tolerated however is claiming
that *-yo was nominative since we clearly don't see case nor gender
agreement with the possessed noun nor do we find **-yo-s. Thematic
animate nominatives are never endingless but Jens wants to pull a
fast one and claim otherwise.
So I side with the endingless locative option which then doesn't
depend on needing case and gender agreeement because it has its
_own_ case and because gender distinction is restricted to strong
cases like nominative and accusative. Notice how genitives and
locatives are undifferentiated between animate and inanimate?
Likewise *-yo was a non-gender-specific locative that never needed
to agree in case with either the possessed or the possessor.
Another way of seeing this is that *-yo was it's own referent with
its own case (locative), pointing in this case to the general _area_
or _domain_ of the owner, ie: the owner's possessions. Thus, an
example of WOLF-GEN-yo was saying much to the effect of "at
the area of the WOLF" or "at/of the WOLF's possessions". This
interpretation would be then parallel to double genitives in
Tyrrhenian, in fact.
= gLeN