On 2008-03-23 20:03, fournet.arnaud wrote:
> Where is it possible
> to get more information
> about Hoffman suffix ?
Georges-Jean Pinault. 2000. "Védique <dámu:nas->, Latin <dominus> et
l'origine du suffixe de Hoffmann". _Bulletin de la Société de
Linguistique de Paris_ 95: 61-117.
Karl Hoffmann reconstructed the "Possessivsuffix" *-hen-/*-hn- back in
1955. In 1972, Eric Hamp proposed the analysis of *abon- as *h2ap-hon-
and argued, from the voicing effect, that the laryngeal was specifically
*h3. Today opinions are divided between the reconstructions *-h1on- and
*-h3on- (with e.g. Pinault and Rix opting for the latter and Nussbaum
for *-h1en-). I used to be in the *-h1en- camp but have defected. What
convinced me that *-h3on- was correct is not just the voicing alone, or
Olsen's (2004) suggestion that the "suffix" should be identified with
the verb root *h3on(h2)- 'load, charge', but especially the laryngeal
breaking visible before the suffix in some Greek derivatives like
<oio:nós> 'eagle, large bird of prey' < *h2owi-h3n-o-, literally
something like 'capable of lifting a sheep' (whether eagles are actually
strong enough is less important than the fact that the ancients were
convinced of that, see Aesop's fable of The Eagle and the Jackdaw).
Piotr