[tied] Re: Origin of Thematic Neuter -om (was: 1sg. -o:)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...> wrote:

>
> Etherman23:
> > It's weak because *bhi is obviously a particle that
> > became an inflection in some languages. It seems
> > more obvious to me that *-e- is a plural (possibly
> > from an earlier *-i- which would be cognate with
> > Uralic *-i plural, and/or PAA *-a-).
>
> Yes, we seem to be agreeing (aside from the AA
> comparison). There would have to be a common
> _oblique_ plural *-i, used in complement with *-it
> (IE *-es, Tyr *-er, Ur *-t, Alt *-r^) in the strong
> cases. This plural is an artifact in plural IE
> pronouns like *wei-.
>
> Comparison between Uralic and EA shows that *-i
> seems to alternate with a plural in *-t and I believe
> that this is the original pattern from Proto-Steppe.

My only issue here is getting from *it to PIE *es. The vocalism makes
no sense to me. On the other hand the accusative and genitive plurals
are easily derived if we assume they were both derived from the
accusative singular. The strong case plural is *t so *mt > *ms (by
lenition) > *ns by assimilation (these last two steps could be
reversed). In the weak cases the plural is *i. If this became an infix
then we would have *im > *em (according to my theory of PPIE vowels) >
*om by Rasmussen's Law.