--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> Schleicher reconstructed: *<avis yasmin varna: na a:st> "a
> sheep that didn't have wool" (i.e. a locative). Of the other
> versions quoted in EIEC, Lehmann/Zgusta opt for another
> construction, with a genitive (and a different relative
> pronoun): *<owis, kWesyo wl.Hna: ne e:st>. A dative
> (*yosmo:i, *kWesmo:i) is of course another possibility.
I wish you hadn't posted this. It is predictable that it is going to
be misused to defend the locative value of *-yo in *wlkWosyo to the
last drop of its author's blood. In Schleicher's sentence (which, by
the way, is not an attestation of anything) focus is on the
possessor of the wool, not on the possessum. In the construction
that have been under heavy scrutiny on the list, <<wlkWos-yo H3o:kW-
s>> 'the wolf's eye', focus is on the possessum, the 'eye'. You
cannot use Schleicher's syntax here, as far as I can see. It would
give the meaning "the eye on which there is a wolf". That spells
nonsense, but will that be understood where it ought to?
Jens