Re: [tied] PIE athematic neuters

On 2006-03-10 10:33, Sergejus Tarasovas wrote:

> I'm sorry in advance if I write a foolishness, but do Lithuanian neuter
> participles have anything to do with it? If eg. <nes^ã,> 'carrying'
> (neut. sg. praes. act. prtcl., now functioning also as masc. pl.)
> doesn't continue *h1nek^(o)nt, then what *does* it continue then?

Well, it wasn't difficult for the individual branches or languages to
create analogical gender forms of participles, cf. Gk. -o:n, -ousa (f.),
-on (n.). Of these, only -o:n is old, the others are regular
developments of analogically generalised *-ont- (as if from *-ont-ih2,
*-ont). Even case forms such as the gen.sg. -ontos contain an analogical
*o grade. The fact is that nobody seems to know for sure what the PIE
non-analogical neuter *-nt- participle looked like.

Piotr