alexandru_mg3 wrote:
> PIE suffix "-ro" is not a variant of "-no", Piotr, semantically is
> very different ...and I still maintain that -ro means "like-X/similar-
> with-X" even in a verbal context (doesn't matter the context in
> fact) ...Please put some examples/contra-examples here to check
> together if I'm right or wrong...
If you were right, *-ro- would combine mostly with nouns (it makes sense
to say that something "is similar to" the referent a noun, but hardly to
an action or state). That, however, does not seem to be the case.
*-nó- (to be precise, the kind of *-nó- that forms verbal adjectives
with passive meanings) is certainly somehow related to *-tó-, since the
morphological function of the two is the same and their distribution is
governed by phonological rather than semantic factors (-nó- is mostly
preferred after stops). As PIE *n and *r alternate in some important
contexts (e.g. stem-finally in the declension of "heteroclitic" neuters
and between derivationally related paradigms, as in the m. *-wo:n, f.
*-wer-ih2 type), it's clear that they sometimes go back to the same
pre-PIE phoneme. It's therefore quite thinkable that the
adjective-forming *-ró- is also a member of the same family of suffixes;
its function is so general that one can't see much semantic difference
between it and *-nó-/*-tó-, except that *-ró- adjectives are less
dependent on relationship with identifiable verbal stems, so *-ró- is an
adjectival suffix par excellence. This, however, may be a matter of
secondary specialisation. Examples of deverbal *-ró- formations (such as
*pik^-ró- from *peik^-) are easy to provide.
Piotr