----- Original Message -----From: C. Darwin GoransonSent: Monday, November 13, 2006 12:27 PMSubject: Re: [tied] The idea of the root *h1eg^ ("I", "to speak")--- In cybalist@... s.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@ ...>
wrote:
>
> ***
>
> For whatever it may be worth, the analysis I favor for *Heg^- is *?
é- (earlier *?a), demonstrative, 'this' + *gé, 'male'.
>
> Perhaps the nonconnectibility of *tu- with any root
suggesting 'hear' (which we might reasonably expect in the second
person as a counterpart to 'speak(er)' in the first person) suggests
an alternative explanation.
>
>
> Patrick
>
> ***
Maybe a distant example of how this seemingly intuitive counterpoint
DOESN'T play out is in certain governmental structures where there
is a "speaker," but no "listener".
Still, you make a point - the logical idea would be to the *tu- form
to be listener. HOWEVER, that form and variants on it are used
throughout the second person singular, while heg^- is unique to the
first person singular nominative and emphatic. It seems an
EXCEPTION, while *tu- seems regular. MOREOVER, you compare the
Uralic system, and you have the 1st person *m- based 1st person
singular pronouns, which along with the *t- based 2nd person
singular (explainable by the fact that Uralic *s can sometimes turn
to *t), suggests something.
My first thoughts were that the "pre-*heg^" first-person singular
nominative and emphatic would be mased on a form closer to the *m -
based forms from the other cases of this pronoun; i.e., the
Tocharian and Hittite may actually hold some early PIE relic which,
after these two groups split off, was replaced with another form.
My theory is that maybe it was some kind of "polite first person"
that overtook the common one. Aren't there such things in Japanese
or in other languages?
<snip>***
One thing we have to consider is that some systems like Uralic are semantically not correspondent.
I neglected in my previous response to specify that I believe the base meaning of *té is 'tribes(man)'; *sé is, I believe, 'clans(man)', perhaps a more intimate second person.
*mé, I believe, is originally a first person plural meaning 'converse(rs)', which was transferred to the singular.
Patrick
***