On Mon, 17 May 2004 18:34:59 +0000, Rob
<
magwich78@...> wrote:
>Concerning the development of plural *-es:
>
>Is it possible that plural *-es descended from a plural pronoun that
>came to be attached to nouns?
That's what I've been saying.
>It seems to me that (Pre-)PIE had
>plurality in pronouns before it had plurality in nouns. One piece of
>evidence in favor of this, I think, is that *-es attached to thematic
>nouns lengthened the stem vowels, e.g. *ekWo-es > *ekWo:s 'horses.'
>Thus, the use of the *-es suffix must have occurred after the
>fixation of the thematic vowel quality as /o/.
The quality of the thematic vowel would have been /o/ in any
case, whether the *-es had been added late or early.
The length (due to contraction) of nom.pl. *-o::s probably
_is_ a sign that this ending is not very old. If the
pronominal marker added to the thematic vowel in the plural
was *es in the nominative and *ey in the oblique, and it was
added early, we would expect *-os(W) and *-oy. The latter
is indeed the oblique form that we see. The former may
still be present in the Vedic nom.pl. ending -a:sas, if from
*-os-es (but Gmc. *-a:siz suggests *-o:s-es?). In any case,
the old nominative was replaced by the oblique *-oy, or by a
form made by suffixing athematic *-es to the thematic vowel
(*-o-es > *-o::s).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...