Re: [tied] Bader's article on *-os(y)o

About the *t/*n thing that Jens just introduced into this
topic, it's the lamest thing yet. Just because two quite evidently
different endings appear to be used for different verbs doesn't
automatically mean that *t and *n are the same phoneme! God, this
is daft. With the heteroclitic declension we can be sure that
*r and *n do oscillate, giving rise to the Heteroclitic Rule
of *-n > *-r. Afterall, to assume that there was some hidden
morpheme in there that gave rise to the change would be
impermissible assumption. We start with what we see, that *r
and *n oscillate and are the same morpheme, and the Heteroclitic
Rule suffices as a solution.

However, I'm sorry, but nothing shows that *-no- and *-to- are the
same morpheme aside from their similar function anymore than *so-
and *to- are the same morpheme or "to" and "though" in English.
These are completely assumptive connections that aren't grounded in
any firm reality and then they are introduced to confuse a topic
further about the origins of the morphemes that were originally
under debate.


= gLeN