--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:
>
> Come to think of it, the particle -yo, which everybody's looking
for
> in connection with gen. -os-yo, may be right under my nose; it
> exists in Danish: jo, an affirmative particle (cf. German ja, in
hte
> same use. Falk & Terp connect it to Sanskr yat, adv. abl. af *ye-
>
Gentlemen, I think I've got it (looking at <jo> in my Danish
Etymological Dictionary):
the -yo is *h2ay-w- "life(time), era", a loanword in IE (cf.
Etruscan <avil>, gen. avil-s, typical funeral inscription: "died so-
and-so many" avil-s, cf the Latin epitaph formula, also with
genitive "died so-and so many" aetatis suis (< *h2ay-t-). Møller
lists several cognates in Semitic.
And here it comes: Gothic ni aiw "never", a ne-pas construction (cf
ne-aiw > Engl. no); <aiw> means "whatsoever". Now this matches with
my idea that the tematic inflection comes from negated nouns, thus:
first we have (nominative)
sg. <noun>-&s, pl. <noun>-és
negated noun in the nominative
né <noun>-&s >
né <noun>-òs (´ = main stress, ` = secondary stress)
<noun>-ós, alone, is now interpreted as a (partitive) genitive,
used also as such as subject (cf. Hittite)
By false division <noun>-ós is reinterpreted as new stem <noun>ó-s,
which becomes the basis for the thematic inflection, which is the
indefinite inflection of <noun>.
But this new nominative <noun>ó-s clashes with the old genitive, and
so a new genitive is created based a then current negative
expression: ne <noun>ós-yo "no of-noun whatsover", where *h2ayw >
ayú > yú > yo; cf Gothic ni aiw "not ever" (and Danish hvor "where",
obs. ihvor "wherever").
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Op.html
(ayw- is there somewhere! ;-) )
According to Burrow "The Sanskrit Language" there are basically
three genitives: -s, -as, -asya. I think I've accounted for them all.
Torsten