Re: Brugmann's Law

On 2008-01-18 02:15, ualarauans wrote:

> If I understand him right, Makovsky argues that mat' had originally
> nothing to do with "mother" but with mat "speech", "voice" (cf.
> _kric^at' blagim matom_ "to shout at the top of one's voice") < PIE
> *mat- "word" (> Go. maþljan, inter alia). So the structure was smth
> like this: j**b ("to perform a sacral action", "to curse/bless") +
> tvoju (oblique pron. 2nd pers. sg.)

But <tvoju> is instr.sg. of the f. possessive pronoun. It doesn't bear
any resemblance whatsoever to the accusative forms of <ty> (other than
having the same initial consonant).

> + mat' ("word" instr.).

Where's the instrumental ending? The "reconstructed" phrase is just too
different from the actual one (not a single word has the right
grammatical form) for the proposed reanalysis to be plausible.

> Later,
> the phrase has been reformed step-by-step to the present state.
>
> The interpretation is very arbitrary, I'd say.

I daresay it is!

Piotr