Re: Why the Proto-Indoeuropean numerals are not motivated within IE?

From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 69689
Date: 2012-05-26

At 7:57:06 PM on Friday, May 25, 2012, piervantrink wrote:

> If we look at the Altaic stems, most of them are mono or
> biconsonantal stems (without the properties o ablaut and
> inflection) and many of those stems are in reality
> onomatopeic ones and perhaps before the IE sprachbund on
> Altaic, the grammar of Altaic was of the creole type (i.e
> without endings=> je manger, tu manger, il manger, nous
> manger, vous manger, ils manger/bi yi [yi=to eat

Failure to inflect verbs to agree in person in number with
their subjects does not make a language 'of the creole
type'.

> and perhaps originally "yi" was a rendition of the sound
> of a baby wanting food from his mother] yi [perhaps there
> was a single pronoun in Altaic wich is bi=me while all the
> other pronouns were borrowed later from IE,i.e originally
> there was a basic dichotomy me/others]

That would be typologically unusual, to say the least.

> yi yi yi yi)

Ay-ay-ay!

Brian