Re: [tied] The "Mother" Problem

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Exu Yangi" <exuyangi@...> wrote:

> >To déru bher. = That (man) carries the wood.
>
> This usage reminds me (greatly) of the Hittite particles that
> often open sentences, such as nu- &c. Are we seeing an ancient
> tendency here?

*To was a demonstrative/deictic pronoun. *Nu also had deictic
force, but does not seem to have modified nouns. Rather, it had a
more temporal meaning.

> Perhaps, but another possibility is a (very old?) *ne-kweit-s (not
> shining/white), in contrast to the light (shining) day. I am not
> sure this explains the -o vocalism either, unless we assume *-ei-
> > *-oi- > *-o:- which seems to be possible given the ancientness
> of the root (and I believe has been suggested in a Caraculimbro
> (sp?) paper on PIE.

From what I know, the negative prefix is typically reflected in the
zero grade: *n.-, presumably from earlier *ne-. So a form like *ne-
kWeit-s would turn out to be *n.kWeits, not *nekWits or similar.
Caraculiambro is Piotr Gasiorowski.

The o-vocalism in *nokWts could possibly be explained by
assimilation with the syllable-final labiovelar. This may also be
the reason for the o-vocalism *wo:kWs, *wókWm. 'voice'. There is a
later parallel in Greek, where the assimilation was taken further:
nuks 'night'. Yet another word where this o-vocalism may be
explained is *(xW)noghWs 'claw, nail'. The (Attic) Greek reflex is
ónuks (< *onúks?), gen. sg. ûchos (< *únchos < *(xW)n.ghWós?).
Again note the coda labiovelar.

> The evidence from the Hittite (nekuts) is rather suspect, possibly
> being from nekuti. Is there any Luwian (or some other dialect)
> where *-ti didn't give *-ts ? I would dearly love to know (from
> actual text) that the final -ts is really, truly < *-tos
>
> Can anyone help?

I wish I could, but I don't know the Hittite texts very well.

- Rob