Re: S mobile (Was : PS Emphatics)

----- Original Message -----
From: "etherman23" <etherman23@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 5:58 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: S mobile (Was : PS Emphatics)


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
> Could you elaborate on your noun class theory?
> To me, s-mobile means something like German "echt"
> --like an intensifying adjective or adverb

My hypothesis (I suppose it's not well developed enough to be
considered a theory) is that Nostratic had noun classes, kind of like
the Bantu languages. I assume that PIE has some fossilized prefixes
left over from Nostratic. The most common would be *s, the s-mobile,
but *d, *w, and *y also abound. Much less widespread is the *k prefix.
I assume the class prefix was affixed to both the noun and the verb
(which agreed with the subject or perhaps focus). In PIE these
prefixes have apparently lost any semantic content they once had. PAA
retains *t'(which loses the ejective feature in PAA and which
corresponds to PIE *d-) and *s (PIE s-mobile) as the feminine suffix
and causative prefix, respectively. This suggest that Nostratic *t'
was a feminine noun class and *s was an animate noun class. Or
something like that. I'm still very my in the early stage of my
investigation.

***

I think you are on the wrong track.

Early languages made a basic choice early on as to a method of
differentiating the multiple but related meanings contained with a *CVC
root.

Prefixing *C(V)- to form noun/activity/material classes is one good method.

But Nostratic choose to expand *CVC with further suffixes to differentiate
meanings so that PSem almost completely and PIE to an overwhelming degree
has triliteral "roots" though the earlier out-of-use roots are recoverable.

I have mentioned a PIE *ye- prefix (really compounding element) meaning
'many', and this is discernible in PA as a prefixed *¿a.

But its function is not truly grammatical (exception: j- in Egyptian) but
semantic.

I have been looking at these data for many moons with an eye to discovering
just what you are thinking about: if it was there, I would have found it.

In PA, I have found something a little different.

There 'water' (*Ha or *Hu) is prefixed to a root meaning 'foot' for what I
interpret to mean 'travel by water'. A compound like that does not seem to
exist in PIE.


Patrick