Re: [tied] 1sg. -o: [was Re: IE Thematic Vowel Rule]

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 39854
Date: 2005-09-02

On Thu, 01 Sep 2005 13:16:02 -0700 (PDT), glen gordon
<glengordon01@...> wrote:

>Nonetheless, I don't think it's a great sin for me
>to ponder on whether a regular sound change is behind
>the development of *-o:. I still think that the only
>possible origin of it is via earlier *-o-mi. The more
>I think about it, the nasalization from *m would
>probably have transfered to the following *i in this
>unstressed intervocalic environment.
>
>Now, I don't know about your general view on /i~/ in
>languages but I don't see that often in the world.
>I'd think it's likely for the nasality itself to
>quickly sink /i~/ to /e~/. That would yield */-o(w)e~/
>out of earlier *-o-mi, which then can very easily
>become our lovely suffix *-o: by the concatenation of
>*o and *e.

Yet another solution that yields circumflex -õ, but we need
acute -o:.

>> It just proves that neuter thematics like *yugóm
>> are really thematics, not m-stems, and that it's
>> absolutely out of the question that the -m belongs
>> to the stem.
>
>While I admit *yugom probably doesn't have to do with
>*-o: like I thought earlier, there is no way that
>you can miss the fact that thematic nouns (which
>mirror their adjectival counterparts) are originally
>genitival derivatives in gen.sg *-os (> animate
>*-o-s) and gen.pl *-om (> inanimate collective *-o-m).

Sorry, but I completely miss that. The nominative *-s (from
*-z) has nothing to do with the genitive *-os/*-es/*-s, and
the accusative *-m has nothing to do with the gen.pl. *-om.

>There is nothing that you've posted yet that can
>better explain the origin of the (pseudo)suffix *-m
>in the inanimate thematics. Without the event of
>Nominative Misanalysis, you're grasping in the dark
>on the etymological source of this 'inanimate' *-m
>and you run the danger of reconstructing phantom
>morphology in Nostratic.

This has nothing to do with Nostratic, as the rise of
thematic nominals appears to be a purely IE thing.

The -m of the thematic neuter is simply the accusative
ending. Since thematic (i.e. definite) nouns and adjectives
are higher on the animacy scale than plain neuters, they
have a marked accusative, like the neuter pronouns, which
are even higher on the animacy scale. Neuters were not
allowed as subjects, so they lacked a nominative.

The scheme is:

pronouns: nominative unmarked
inanimate athematics: accusative unmarked

all others have a marked nominative (*-z), and a marked
accusative (*-m, except neuter pronouns, which have *-d):

nom. acc.
pron.anim. -0 -m
pron.inan. -- -d
them.anim. -z -m
them.inan. -- -m
ath.anim. -z -m
ath.inan. -- -0


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...