Torsten:
> That's right. I don't under stand why an example
> from an isolating language can be used to justify
> the assumption of an endingless derivation in an
> inflecting language.
Because your mind is limited by inaccurate definitions
like 'isolating' which is in the end only a relative,
not an absolute, term. English still has many
inflections and so it begs the question: How many
inflections constitutes 'a non-isolating language'
(as if we could possible count the number of
inflections)?
Let go of this conviction of yours.
> Another thing you should think of: the gentive in
> -yo belong to the thematic inflection and is
> therefore late, not of Nostratic date.
But I never said that this had anything to do with
Nostratic! ?? I indeed said precisely that the
thematic genitive *-osyo was created during the
middle of the Late IE Period (5000-4000 BCE) by
the attachment of the originally free particle *ya
(in the endingless locative that existed at that
stage) to the existing genitive *-as, which was
too homophonous to its nominative *-a-s to simply
leave it as is.
Later, the mLIE relative pronoun's nominative *yas
became *yos by Vowel Shift and its endingless locative
particle was done away with. It would have
become **yo in IE proper but only remains as part of
genitive *-osyo as you can see. The locative is very
capable of expressing possession in various languages
and so there is nothing a priori impossible about
this development. It is in fact so commonplace
that it is very likely that it happened in pre-IE.
because it explains things in a straightforward way.
Come to think of it, it might be better to interpret
the *ye-denominals as originating from the
incorporation of a _locative_ phrase ending in *ya
'with which' rather than a noun denoting possession
in *-yo-. It hardly matters either way anyway,
because both spell 'incorporation'.
> "Fernsehen Sie" oder "sehen Sie das Fernsehen"?
> >:)
> Actually it's "Sehen Sie fern?", beleve it or not.
"See you (the) window"? I can believe! Halleluja! You
think Hochdeutsch is crazy... You should take a look
at Mennonite German. Yikes! :)
At any rate, no language is perfectly free from the
vice of incorporation, it seems. It's probably more
a matter of relative frequency of usage.
And so, incorporation in pre-IE is not impossible
anymore than it apparently isn't in Reconstructed
IE itself. You're fighting a lost battle.
= gLeN
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