Peter:
> Nothing wrong with the process, but is *aj ever atttested in Sanskrit?
Sadly, not that I know of. I'm assuming admittedly that some early form
of IndoAryan, at least, had more than one form of the 1ps pronoun in
order to have been able to idiosyncractically spread a misnalysed -am
to all other pronouns. There simply is no attested IE suffix **-em
anywhere else, not even Latin (... more below), so I can think of no
other explanation for -am at this point except a postIE one.
> It also appears on tamen, tandem and others. Could it be the source
> of the -im adverbs?
Unfortunately I couldn't find Burrow's book on "The Sanskrit Language"
which I could swear has something to say on the issue of the source of
-am in Sanskrit pronouns. Nonetheless, my Borg-like senses decided to
adopt a revised strategy by consulting Latin dictionaries to discover
the true source of the apparently 'emphatic' /-dem/ suffix. I reemphasize
that we can only analyse the suffix as _-dem_ not *-em within Latin
considering ea-dem and is-dem. It doesn't seem sensible that the
inanimate *-d should spread to the masculine and feminine as well.
One dictionary (first published in the turn of the previous century,
mind you) claimed that /-dem/ was somehow related to /dies/ "day". This
etymology is clearly mental so I have no choice but to discover a more
sensible one on my own. I found it and it is completely satisfactory,
I think. The issue can be laid to rest.
The Latin word /de:mum/ is placed after pronouns to give an emphatic
and isolating meaning. Thus the sentence "Ea de:mum firma amicitia est."
The uncanny similitarity between /ea de:mum/ and /eadem/ in both
phonetics and semantics should permanently destroy any future inklings
to connect Sanskrit /idam/ with Latin /idem/ and concoct the outrageous
construction of IE **idem that Jens supports. Rather, the -dem suffix
in Latin is just a contraction of former /de:mum/. The end.
Ergo, since **-em doesn't exist, *-d _is_ only attested in word-final
position as I said before I was illogically challenged. To add another
perspective, the exclusively word-final inanimate nominoaccusative *-d
is afterall mirrored by the equally word-final-only animate nominative
in *-s.
= gLeN