Etherman23:
> My only issue here is getting from *it to PIE *es.
There is no issue. We regularly get IndoTyrrhenian
*-es directly from Proto-Steppe *-it because *i
becomes *e, not *ei in this case. Remember? You need
an open monosyllabic stem to get *i > *ei in IndoTyr.
Otherwise, there is no glide in the majority of cases.
So the only thing left to understand is *-t > *-s,
which is based firmly on the already justified
Sibilantization rule. The accusative plural at this
stage was probably already reduced to *-am-as by
vowel harmony. Vowel Harmony affected verb inflection
as well, which explains why we have 'active'
*e-grade and 'stative' *o-grade distinctions.
So what is the issue? Is it because you want *-ns to
come from *-m-t instead? Even so, _you_ too have to
explain why *e is in IE's nom.pl *-es. I explain it
simply by noting that without vocalic strengthening
of *e (which would otherwise become *a by Syncope),
it would merge phonetically with thematic singulars
in *-a-s. So *e was simply preserved as is.
> 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.
But it *did* become an infix in the demonstrative
paradigm of *to-, eg: *to-i-su 'in these'. It remained
*i because the original ITyr plural form would have
been simpler, *tai. So *-su was only added in Late IE.
We also have *wei- "we" (from ITyr *wei).
= gLeN
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