--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
> > You do seem to be claiming thematic accusative singular *-o-m,
> > athematic genitive plural *-om. Perhaps you could clarify by an
> > example, e.g. *owyom 'egg'.
>
> Yes but please don't mix thematic and athematic together for no
> reason. This, after other more real contortions of what I said, is
> why I got bitchy in the first place. Why should 'egg' prove
anything?
In
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/32473 you wrote,
'It's called adding two and two. We see thematic adjectives in the
default case, the nominative, in *-o-s that are indistinguishable
from genitives; we see Anatolian confusing genitives and adjectives
(a possible IndoIE-Tyrrhenian areal feature, in fact); and we see
stems ending in *-om conveying collective concepts like *yugom
"yoke" and *kmtom "hundred". We see an opposition between genitive
singular *-os and genitive plural *-om; we also see a similar
fortuitous opposition of nominative *-s and accusative *-m, two
pairs of declensional suffixes just ripe for confusion and
interchange. That confusion produced animate adjectives in *-o-s
and inanimates in *-o-m which became animate nouns in *-o-s and
inanimate ones in *-o-m.
'Common sense. All the i's are dotted.'
*owyom 'egg', presumably originally meaning 'avian', would be an
example of such an inanimate thematic noun. (The reconstruction
needs tidying up - I can't even remember which laryngeal the word
starts with, and I certainly don't have the reconstruction of
the 'bird' word - > Latin _avis_ etc. - to hand.) I thought you
yourself gave it as an example a few years ago, but I can't find the
posting.
The problem here is that Jens does not accept *-om as the genitive
plural - the evidence for -o:m looks much better.
Richard.