From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 42995
Date: 2006-01-17
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
To: "Miguel Carrasquer" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 11:40 PM
Subject: Re[2]: [tied] Re: The personal pronouns of PIE (and other families)
are loans
At 4:58:15 PM on Monday, January 16, 2006, Miguel Carrasquer
wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:27:36 +0000, Rob
> <magwich78@...> wrote:
>>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer
>><mcv@...> wrote:
>>Just out of curiosity:
>>> That is neither easier nor correct. OE <þa:> gives ME
>>> <tho:>, <the>, which regularly develops into the plural
>>> definite article. The emphatic form OE <þa:s> becomes
>>> the ME demonstrative <tho:s(e)> > ModE <those>.
>>Was the -s in origin the plural ending (ModE -(e)s)?
> Hardly: it's the same -s as in this, these; Du. deze;
> Germ. dieser, etc.
> My guess would be it's from *so, the original nominative
> (m.) of the dem. pronoun, but I'd have to look it up.
It appears as <-se>, <-si> (e.g., ON runic nom.sg. sá-si,
sú-si, þat-si, acc.sg. þan-si, þá-si, þat-si, etc.). OED
(1989) suggests that it's probably identical with Gothic
<sai> 'see, behold'.
[...]
Brian
***
Patrick:
OED must have been having a 'bad hair day'.
That looks to me like a bit of proof for deriving "nominative -*s"
from -*se, 'apart', which is my suggestion for nominative singular and
plural -*s.
Thank you, Brian, he 'whispered'.
***