>
> > I'm unable to formulate a full theory at this point, though.
>
> It's been found. Don't fret one minute more :)
>
Thank you for your presentation of yet another theory ;-)
The present-stem-as-participle theory is not mine, and it is
supposed to hold for Finno-Ugric too (I believe Jens believes in a
version of that too). Now, if my idea holds, that -m, -s, -t are
personal suffixes attached to gerunds or participles, then we should
imagine the language in which it happened as one with personal
possessive suffixes.
Therefore, and since I don't have a Finnish textbook I looked in my
Hungarian textbook. I does have personal suffixes, they can be
attached, apart from nouns, also to participles, and the noun which
results from adding a personal suffix is like any other noun in that
case endings, eg. those of the locative can be added to it ('house-
his-in' and 'fearing-his-in', ie. "in-his-house" and "in-his-
fearing"). Furthermore, the personal endings of the verb (both of
the intransitive and the transitive inflection) are similar enough
to the personal endings of the noun that one can imagine a common
origin for them.
So, for pre-PIE (Nostratic?) we would have:
<V-ptcp><personal ending><locative suffix>
where
V-ptcp is the verbal stem itself, which must have been able to
function as a gerund/participle
personal ending is -m, -s, -t
locative suffix is -i, -u
As for the -tI, -tU and -Ø of Slavic 3rd sg. I think it's easier to
imagine they originated as *-ti, *-tu and -Ø, rather than from *-ti
-> *tI, *-tu -> -tU, -Ø as Miguel does. I think Czech has an
endingless 3rd sg. and pl.; why can't that be original?
Torsten