From: G&P
Message: 61903
Date: 2008-12-06
>I've long had an idea
that the -ter suffix of names of
>relatives are
locative-marking suffixes,
Two other ideas that have been around for a while are:
(a) it is contrastive, and related to the *–ter-os we see in comparatives.
(b) it is not –ter at all, but *-@... or *-Hter (*p-Hter, ma-Hter, bhra-Hter, and so on).
Peter