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

>
> It's interesting that Sanskrit /aham/ which would show your **-em,

as

> would all of its other pronouns 'presumably', is related to a Greek
> cognate and is known to reflect *egxom. In this instance, it's quite
> apparent where the *m-ending comes from, the 1ps thematic non-

indicative

> *-om, as shown by its indicative variant in *-o:. We've already

talked

> about how *egxo: may mean "my being here" from *e "here", similar in
> development as Inuktitut /uva-Na/ and Aleut /ti-N/ with identical
> etymologies.
>
> Now it appears to me that, like many other languages, IE had a

bundle

> of variants of the 1ps like *eg(x), *egxo:, *ego:, *egom and *egxom.
> I can see some stage of "pre-Sanskrit" likewise having a few.

Probably

> let's say, *aj (< *eg, as reflected in Hittite /uk/) and *aham (<
> *egxom, hence Greek /egon/). If so, I can certainly imagine a native
> speaker trying to make sense of the *aj/*aham conundrum and

misunder-

> standing *-am as a special pronominal suffix when it really wasn't
> historically. So then, *tuv-am, *id-am, *ay-am, *yuy-am, *vay-am,
> etc ensues and forever changes the Sanskrit pronominal system.
>

There's a parallel example from 17th century Danish: At that time
there existed two versions of "him", namely <hannem> (continuation of
the old dative, cf. Swedish <honom>) and the short <ham>, and one
version of "them", <dem>. Since <hannem> looked older and more
correct than <ham> (and suited the 17th century style of writing
everything as complicated as possible), a new, etymologically
unfounded version of "them" was made up (and used extensively),
<dennem>.

Torsten