Peter:
> Oh, aha, a "reach", thanks.
Hehe, if you like that one, I got a million more jokes to share :P
> the author concludes that "...the numeral "10" should be reconstructed
> in two variants: (a) *dek^M and (b) *dek^Nt°.
The *-t is a termination. It's *dekm-t. The *-t- is also found in the
ordinal ending *-to-. So this numeral is fundamentally *dekm. The word
*dekmt presumably meant "a group of ten; a decad" as opposed to "ten".
> The termination *-M indicates a frozen accusative of a root noun.
This is a "conclusion" that's equally untenable for *dekm as it is for
the Semitic-derived *septm (< *sab`atum) from which we can obtain no
such suffix at all. Further, morphologically, there's absolutely no
reason for an accusative suffix of all things (something that marks
the _ANIMATE object_ of a sentence!!!) to be stuck to *dekm. Why would
*dekm be "animate" when it's not even declined for case?! Why would it
exclusively be an object? The problems are immediately intractable.
And in the end, this theory is as old as the hills. It's time to bury
the idea and move ahead at least a century. The fact is there is no *-m
suffix tacked on to any of IE's numerals. What we have is an atomic root
*dekm whose etymology must be broken down much further into the recesses
of pre-IE than has been previously conceived, not in IE itself.
> Would this explanation be acceptable for you, Glen?
Not at all, and for the reasons above. I've learned of this idea a long
time ago, have debated it before and am much further prepared to destroy
it then I have ever been yet. It just doesn't work with IE's grammar, even
ignoring it altogether. I'm serious when I say this idea is too old to
bother with anymore.
= gLeN