> And on the subject of collapse of inflectional systems: Apart from
> the Scandinavian languages the only other examples I know of
> languages which have lost all inflection for person and number in
> the verb are those dialects of Latvian that are spoken on former
> Livonian territory in the north of the country.
Which gave me this idea:
As I noted some time back, the suffix -(t)e/or appears in the most
diverse places in IE languages: actor suffix for verbs, family
relationship suffix, suffix for directional adverbs, (3rd sg) suffix
for middle voice. The -t- is 'detachable' in the sense that suffix
appears sometimes with, sometimes without it, with no important change
in semantics. In Dutch (one of these days I'll have to read up on the
history of the Germanic languages) there is an 'er' "there",
besides 'daar' "there" and it's tempting to identify these two as free
occurrences (ie. as independent words) of that same elusive suffix.
The more so since they can be used as a 'preliminary subject' in
sentences with indefinite subjects in Dutch, Danish and partially
English (but there almost only with 'be')
Du.: 'er komt iemand' "there comes someone", ie "someone's coming"
Da.: 'der kommer nogen' id.
Du.: 'daar komt iemand' "thére comes someone"
Da.: 'her kommer ingen' "here comes no one", ie "no one comes here"
Da.: 'så kommer der nogen' "then comes there someone", ie "then
someone comes" (note subject-verb inversion)
So I thought: If the IE Nordwestblock language (which must been
a 'primitive', ie. early language, cf its two genders and 'dangling
prepositions', like Hittite) had been a language in which the IE
verbal stem and ending had not yet fused into one word, then a middle
(or rather impersonal) form would have looked like (with S-V inversion)
V (t-)er
where V is as in Greek 3rd sg. (without the final -i)
(or
V-t er
with standard 3rd sg. -t
When they fused, the result would be
V-ter (V-tor?)
an ordinary 3rd sg middle
Which means we would explain the tendency towards non-inflection in
verbs in Northern Germanic (it was never there in the substrate) and
the form of the middle with one idea.
I think I read a long time ago that in Celtic the 3rd sg middle can be
used in all persons and numbers. Is that so?
Torsten