Re: Stative, locative etc etc

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> The two measly word sets that are used as evidence that pre-pre-

PIE

> was stative and therefore for a thing had separate lexical entries
> for it qua active agent and qua passive object are agni-/fire and
> aqua-/water. For some odd reason both "passive entries" are -r/-n
> heteroclitic stems. Now what's that about? Why would "fire"
> and "water" need a nominative (once ergative?) if they already had

an

> agent? Something fishy is going on.
>
> It occurred to me that all the -r/-n stems I know refer to
> uncountable stuff, masses. Such that an interpretation of *-r as
> originally not an ergative or nominative marker, but a locative
> marker, makes sense.
>
> Thus not
>
> "the water rushes" but
> "in-the-water there-is-rushing"
>
> which fits nicely with an interpretation of 3rd sg *-ti as a
> participal suffix
>
> "in-the-water (there-is-)rushing"
>
> (or "in-the-blood", "in-the-liver", "in-the-thigh", "on-the-road")
>
> Besides:
> Germanic here, there, where. All with a locative r-suffix. And they
> can be (pseudo-)subjects to boot: here is ..., there is ..., where
> is ..., Danish even with arbitrary verbs: her optræder <noun> "here
> performs <noun>" etc. And they occur as place-holders in

preposition-

> neuter pronoun phrases: thereof, hereafter, wherewith. Dutch shows
> the loosest association between "locativic pronoun" and pre-(and in
> this case post-)position/preverb, so that the latter is almost back
> in its original function as adverb:
>
> "Waar praat je over?" >
> *"What talk you about?" ie "What are you talking about"
>

Maybe this is where the mysterious disappearing -r of the family
words belong, thus, in pseudo-Latin

pater fatur

does not just mean

"father says"

but

"on the father-side/on father's side, it is said"

and mother similarly. All out of respect, of course, and the fact
that marriages were exogamous, in a two-phratry society, where the
opinion of the group (here phratry), not the individual, matters. If
this is so, the r-less nominatives are actual nominatives (or old
endingless absolutives). The unpersonal/locative -r form was used as
stem for the other cases.


Torsten