Miguel:
> Miguel has explained it as a mere merger of
> former abl. **-abhí-âtu and dat. **-abhi-á-atu.
Andrew:
> What are you talking about here, pray tell?
For added perspective, I personally have a different
view of pre-IE. I think that, being that *bHi appears
to be a free particle in the earliest stages of IE
(given things like *e-bHi 'by here' in Anatolian and
*am-bHi 'around' and the clear-as-day evidence in
English of "by" for pete's sake!), the case forms
with *bHi are late (post-Anatolian).
Therefore, there can simply be no such plural marker
**-abHi- in pre-IE, let alone Nostratic. I interpret
IE plural *-es as being from IndoTyrrhenian *-es
(circa 7000 BCE) which in turn comes from Proto-
Steppe *-it (around 9000 BCE -- to which Uralic,
EskimoAleut, ChukchiKamchatkan and Altaic would also
be affiliated). Final *-t is regularly softened to
*-s in IndoTyrrhenian, remaining *-s in IE and
rhotacizing to *-r in Tyrrhenian.
= gLeN
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