Re: But where does *-mi come from?

> >
> > This, then, offers no basis for an analysis of the IE s-

nominative

> > subject of mi-conjugation verbs as an original ablative, for the
> two
> > constructions do not mean the same. It also seems to me that you
> > depart from a problematizing attitude to things that are in
> reality
> > well understood. The absolute constructions are really not
> > problematic. If a noun and a participle are combined in concord

in

> > an adverbial case, we get an adverbial sentence constituent. The
> > original situation must have involved a choice: In the locative

it

> > would mean "while ...", with the instrumental "because ...", and
> > with the ablative "after ...". Gothic has an absolute accusative
> > which must have originally meant something like "as long

as ...".

> > These meanings are all fully understandable from the general
> > functions of the cases involved. It must be ascribed to a
> secondary
> > development that the individual languages generalize one of the
> old
> > cases that could be so construed.
> >

There three types of 'situation-designators' or 'sentenceoids' in IE.
Sentence with finite verb using mi-conjugation.
Sentence with finite verb using hi-conjugation.
Dependent clause with non-finite verb.

To please Occam I should try to reduce the number of entities. Since
I know many believe the 3rd pers. suffixes of the mi-conjugation
(*-t-, *-nt-) are identical to, and therefore probaly derived from,
the participle suffixes *-t- and *-nt- (and similarly for 3rd pers
in Finnish). It follows from that observation that constructions
with verbs in the mi-conjugation are derived from constructions with
participles. I decided to follow up on that idea.


Torsten