Re: [tied] No person and number endings in IE Nordwestblock?

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 7:49 AM

Subject: [tied] No person and number endings in IE Nordwestblock?

 

<snip>

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)

 

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Patrick:

 

Torsten, quite frankly, I am surprised that anyone on this list _could_ write what you have written above:

 

1) no language — at any time in its history — is 'primitive'; if it lacks inflections that contemporaneous languages had, it has simply developed differently;

 

2) one gender, two genders, three genders, or multiple noun classes, or no gender — all are equally unprimitive;

 

3) there are no dangling repositions in Hittite; there are prepositions qua adverbs there are differently syntactically employed;

 

4) fusion is not progress nor decline.

 

The underlying, tacit assumption is that manifestations of IE grammar and syntax as we know them are somehow "advanced", which is utter rot, if you will forgive me.

 

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<snip>

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?

 

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Patrick:

 

The explanation is far simpler.

 

Far North Europeans did not originally speak IE; and when they did learn to speak it, they learned imperfectly, and retained some speech habits from whatever they spoke before.

 

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