Re: rtl

On 2007-06-19 21:08, stlatos wrote:

> I really would prefer a word for a tool, item, etc. I know that is
> not all that is formed by -tlo- (one of the reasons I separate its
> origin from -tro-) but that is the problem I'm investigating now.

It was just the first example that had occurred to me. The trouble is
that root nouns were a vanishing residual formation already in PIE and
their scattered remnants may be difficult to identify. I'll try to find
further possible examples.

> Your argument about two meanings being able to be given to "cutter"
> doesn't apply so well to an intransitive verb.

Why? How about "runner" or "sleeper"?

> And there are specific problems with this word being considered a
> root-noun. IE languages show reflexes of *domxos 'house' but *dems-
> in the old compound.

*dems is generally regarded as the gen.sg. of the acrostatic root noun
*dóm(h2)- in a fossilised univerbation. It's more archaic than the
productive thematic derivative *dómh2-o-, and little wonder that it
managed to survive only in traces.

> ...That is, if forms like *wekslom, *sepelklom, and *pa:flom
> had -lom analyzed out as the ending (with the many variations becoming
> too complex to be seen as regular from the stem at the time), why did
> that not last and -culum return as a whole ending?

Because it was still more transparent. Speakers of early English
experimented with all kinds of agent and instrument nouns, yet
eventually granted full productivity to the suffix -er, which has the
advantage of never obscuring its derivational base.

Piotr