Piotr:
> It even seems possible to regard the alternative thematic plural in
> *oi as the original unmarked _vocative_ i.e. *wl.kWo-D > *wl.kWoi, and
> the *-oi- part of the locative plural as the old locative plural sans
> any case ending (your solution is similar).
I can't take it anymore! :) I have to object.
Naturally, the locative is *-i in IE and for the longest time I thought
that it was created relatively late in the language. However there's
nothing about my formulation of QAR and the like that says necessarily
that this is so. I merely assumed so because of the unmarked locatives.
I figured the simpler form might be the older one.
To the contrary, as I'm exploring the wonderful world of translation (or
rather, "re-translation") in Etruscan, I can't help but notice the
commonality of the locative *-i even in Tyrrhenian languages as well.
In Etruscan we find /-i/ or /-e/ and it's part of the dative suffix
/-si/ (genitive -s + locative -i) also found in Lemnian.
Tyr *-i is figured in Etruscan, Lemnian, Eteo-Cypriot, and even Minoan
(A-SA-SA-RA-ME = Assaram-e "with Asherah"). It's important to note that
there are clear correlations between the Tyrrhenian and IE case systems
involving the accusative (/tn/ 'that' = *tom), genitive (/-s/ = *-os)
and inessive ending (/-tHi/ 'in' = *dHi). So adding the locative *-i to
this list of IndoTyrrhenian case suffixes isn't far-fetched.
If this is so, there must have been a coexistence of both a locative in
*-i and an unmarked one in earlier forms of IE.
> I'd analyse it as regular *-o:s (from *-oD-z) [...]
Why is *-oD-z preferable over *-o- + *-es again? It doesn't even have to
be phonetically *-o-es either. We can go straight to *-o:s by analogy
with the singular *-o-s and athematic stems in *-es without an intermediate
like **-o-(?)es.
= gLeN