--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
>
> Jens:
> > On a more abstract level, i.e. in an earlier stage, the 2sg *-s
> > has arisen out of a word-final *-t, while the 3sg *-t has arisen
> > out of something else, apparently something containing a nasal
> > feature (a prenasalized /Nd/?).
>
> Miguel:
> > Why "apparently"?? There's nothing nasal about the 3sg., as
> > far as I can see.
>
> Nor can I. Does anyone else see the irony that Jens is trying to
> give us an account of preIE without any understanding of what
> he's reconstructing towards?
>
> He can't seem to accept that this *-t is related to *to- because he
> can't accept that that demonstrative was originally gender-
nonspecific
> because he can't accept that *so is merely a seperate particle that
> was infused into the *to-paradigm as is plainly visible to anybody
> with half a brain because he can't let go of his *s/*t sound change
> obsession which yields no insight into IE whatsoever.
>
> Frustrating.
I respond to you both here. I thought at least *you* both knew what
I was driving at, even if it is not generally accepted knowledge.
The idea is this:
The stem of the IE verb reflects an agent noun: Ved. hánmi 'I kill'
contains the same stem as vrtra-hán- 'killer of Vrtra', so *gWhen-
m+i is properly "a killer (am) I".
With some root structures the agent noun of this short type has an
extension in *-t-, as Ved. soma-kr-t- 'make of soma'. The 3sg form
of the aorist ákar from *kWer-t will then have meant "a maker (was
he)". The passive participle in *-to- must be an adjectival
derivative from this: *kWr-t-ó- "belonging to a maker, what a maker
has, what a maker has made, made".
Other roots (or root structures?) form the agent noun as an n-stem.
Thus Avest. spasan-, OHG spehho 'scout', OLat. as-se:do:, -
o:nis 'assessor', OHG man-ezzo 'cannibal'. Some of these form ppp in
*-no-, Ved. ptc. sanná-, sbst. ánna-m 'food'.
The joint testimony of this leads to the conclusion that -t- and -(e)
n- are not only allomorphs, but originally phonetic variants.
Martinet toyed with a pre-nasalized [Nd] on many occasions, and it
is hard to see where else the solution to the riddle may lie. We
need a special element anyway if final *-t goes to *-s in the 2sg
marker (and the s-stems, I'd say, and of course in the few remaining
s/t-stems).
It may then also be assumed that the active nt-participle is in
origin basically this morpheme followed by case-endings. The old
allomorphy has been analyzed by Birgit Olsen in her congress
report "Indo-European Word Formation" from Copenhagen 2004. The
congress was in 2000, so we have had this information for quite a
while now, and I believe we have already been over it on this list a
number of times.
I would like to add myself that I would assume that the 3pl active
of the verb /-ent/ is then ultimately composed of this same morpheme
followed by a plural marker. There seems to be no way of singling
out a pluralizing "/-(e)n-/" in the pair 3sg *-t : 3pl *-ent.
Jens