Re: Brugmann's Law

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
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).

Ja znaju, but this is what he thinks the phrase originally stood
for, although he doesn't actually reconstruct how exactly it looked
in this protostage I.e. he doesn't propose smth like *jebi teN
matomI or *jebHei tvem matomis or whatever. He implies it :)

> > + 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.

I agree.