Re: [tied] Re: But where does *-mi come from?

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 4:46 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: But where does *-mi come from?

<snip>

> You don't have to use the ppp in Latin, present participle in *-
ónt
> will do. And if one has
> locative thematic *-oi and primary *-ónti
> you get *-oi > Latin -i: ; voila, nom. pl.
>
>

So what was nominative (*-áz > -óz) and accusative (*-ám > *-óm)
doing then? They were partitives (two partitives?? but that's as
close as I can get now) which later, when the participle began to be
understood as a finite verb, split up into *´-z(nom.sg.)/*-óz
(gen.sg.) and *´-m(acc.sg)/*-óm(gen.pl.), respectively, for the new
and old uses, respectively. The plural partitive (?) ended up as
accusative for merely statistical reasons; "one man eats thousand
fish", sg. V pl., is more common than "thousand men eat one fish",
pl. V sg.

***

Patrick:

This is fun. We have invented a new discipline: 'stream of consciousness' linguistics.

First, it is much more likely that the participle derived from a 3rd p. pl. finite verbal form than vice versa. I suppose it is even possible that the -*tó is derived from a 3rd p. sing. finite verbal form.

The accusative -*m is from pre-PIE *ma, 'on (the surface of)'; cf. the Egyptian preposition m. This is shown best by accusative infinitives like Sanskrit dá:tu-m, 'in order to give' = 'on giving (future)'.

I do think it quite likely that the absolute case was used for an 'object' in a perfective context while *ma may have been used to mark the object in an imperfective one, coming quite close to a partitive. Also, it might have been useful to mark an animate object before markers for animate ergative subjects were introduced.

This might well explain the genitive plural in -*óm if it started life as a 'partitive'.

The nominative -*s is probably the demonstrative "S" discussed by Greenberg, deriving from *se, 'separate'. Formally, then, it singles out the (ergative) subject for special attention; this is Sumerian i, 'that'.

I certainly do not think statistics has much to do with anything here.

***

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