> If we look at the PIE pre-/post- -verb/-positions themselves, they
> seemed to have suffixes -o, -i, -er. That's not part of the PIE
case
> system, but might be part of a pre-PIE or non-IE case system. Even
> Basque loans postpositions.
>
Cf. the Semitic prepositions
Proto-Semitic *bi "in"
Akkadian bas^u, Ethiopian bo: "in him" > "there is"
Hebrew, Syrian b&, ba,
Arab. bi
Ethiopian ba
Interesting that Semitic offers a semantic 'bridge' between the
postposition *bhi and the 'locative verb' *bh-w-/*bh-y-, which IE
doesn't. Also, if Semitic had been the donor of post(etc)positions
to IE, we should expect them be nouns in either acc (ending in -u)
or gen. (ending in -i). Which is pretty close to what we see.
>
> > Obviously, *-bhi- cannot be a postposition.
>
> of PIE. *abhi/*obhi with variants *pi etc might though. Note the
> similarity with the *xap- "water", *poGW- "(make) drink" complex;
I
> think it that set of postpositions etc had to do with postion
> relative to 'our' river, as is common in some communities.
And the /bh/ or /p/ of "water, drink", of the above-
mentioned 'locative verb' for being and building as used as verb
stem extension, and of the plural oblique case suffix have one thing
in common: they associate themselves easily with /m/, either as
prenasalised /mb/ or alternating with /m/. That sets it apart from
other cases of IE bh/p.
Torsten