--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:
>
> On 2006-05-06 12:01, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > N1-<es(j)o> N2 is actually N1 es(j)o N2; 'N1's N2' is 'N1
his/its
> > N2' as in Norwegian and Dutch today.
>
> The possibility of such an analysis may have facilitated the
confusion
> between the nominal and pronominal endings (cf. also the
reanalysis of
> <Johnes> 'John's' as <John his> in Early Modern English, which
> demonstrates that such a thing could have happened at different
times in
> different Germanic languages). On the other hand, the confusion in
> question is widespread, no matter whether reanalysis is possible
or not.
I'm not sure that I understand the last paragraph (unless ther's an
example of it in the next paragraph).
> By the way, in OE it was apparently the nouns that influenced the
> pronouns, cf. <hwæs>, <þæs>. As I have said before, the Gmc.
gen.sg. is
> a mess.
One way or another, we'll have to account for the fact that these
deictics seem to come apart at a seam, with initial *kW-, *k-, *s-
and *t-. I suggested earlier that the the relative/interrogative
pronoun started in the relative function, in constructions of the
type
<subordinate clause>-*kW <neutral deictic><VP>
(where the <neutral deictic> is the ancestor of Latin is)
cf Hittite
<subordinate clause>-*kWis <VP>
"whosoever <subordinate clause>, he <VP>"
in other words that *-kW was a relative clause finaliser (cf.
Basque -ko); *-k, *-s, *-t would then have been definite suffixes,
which could be appended to whole clauses.
End of old proposal.
Extra proposal:
Since the part of the deictic that contains the vowel is descended
from an independent word (the neutral deictic), it might show /e/.
Torsten