Re: [tied] *kW- "?"

From: tgpedersen
Message: 39974
Date: 2005-09-13

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> Torsten:
> > Mandarin 'de' is used in exactly the same way as
> > Basque 'ko', which is otherwise a diminutive
> > suffix,
>
> In Mandarin, 'de' is not a diminutive. It's retroflex
> -r that pops up here and there somewhat
> optionally.
>

For the record, I never claimed it was.


>
> > [...] I believe a Vasconic substrate caused the
> > formation in IE of similar constructions: 'clause
> > + ko + demonstrative + sentence' [...]
>
> Which is impossible unless you move the Vasconic
> population into Eastern Europe :( We don't need this
> baseless conjecture.


Yep, there's a problem there. But consider:
1) PIE had coordinated, not subordinated sentences, so the *kW-
pronouns must be late.
2) -ko, with plain /k/, and therefore suspected of being a loan,
existed in PIE, as it does in Basque, and diminutive endings can be
loaned.
3) Until about 1500 BCE, all IE speakers could be reached by ship in
the Mediterranean.

Therefore, it is possible that this "colonial" construction was
loaned back to the PIE motherland in time for it to follow the Indo-
Iranians to their new home.

At any rate, since there is alternation the initial consonant in PIE
between relative (*kW-) and demonstrative (*s-, *t-) pronouns, they
have to be split in the middle, which leaves us with a morpheme *kW-
to be explained away anyway, whichever origin we attribute to it. It
is a remarkable coincidence that Basque has a similar morpheme.

Besides, I think the same morpheme appears in *-kWe "and". The
semantics that the two share is something like that of what in
computer languages is called a 'throw' command (for those that have
wriiten recursive descent parsers). What that means is: "End and
wrap up the present analysis of this sentence element and assume
it's an NP".


Torsten