>Regularization means "to make regular". The accent and root-Ablaut
>of thematic stems (verbal and nominal) is anything but regular,
>since all variants occur.

What irregularies? Variants as in...? Give examples.

As I say, the regularization caused the accent to be put on the
_initial_ syllable. This pattern is clearly shown by the
_regular_ paradigms of *bher- "to carry", *wlkWo- "wolf" and
*ek^wo- "horse". I fail to see what your problem is.


>What about pronominal G. *tosio, etc.?

You must be daft. Listen: I just finished saying that the genitive
and nominative of all these vowel-final stems would otherwise be
identical if not for the added ending *-yo!

In the case of *to-, the inanimate genitive *tos-yo is totally
expected and understandable to avoid the merger with *tos, the
_animate_ **NOMINATIVE** plural. Aaarrghh.


>>Another way of avoiding confusion is to make the genitive *-o:s (*-o- +
>>*-os).
>
>Which didn't happen.

No, of course not. Someone like you, however, who ignores solid
rules and lacks understanding of pre-IE stages, would probably
expect this development though.

The reason why it doesn't exist is because the original gen.sg.
ending was *-s� (note *xwei-s) while the gen.pl. was vowel-initial
*-�n� (note *xwi-om and not **xwei-m). The gen.sg. was not
originally a vowel-initial suffix and hence, as I said before, it
would have merged in form with the nominative of thematic stems
if it weren't for *-yo.


>>4) The vocative is built on the demonstrative *e meaning "here,
>> there" (the same used for the past tense: "there" => "then")
>
>No.

Why not? The vocative was originally endingless and identical
with the nominative (The original vocative of *ek^wos is *ek^wo).
Later the deictic *-e came to be used because endingless weak
cases came to be hard for IndoEuropean speakers to accept.


>*bh�ros is an action noun ("what is carried, burden"), *bhor�s an
>agent noun ("he who carries, carrier").

There is an underlying adjectival meaning to words like *bhor�s
("burdenful" => "burdenful _one_"/"one who carries"). To state
explicitly, *bh�ros derives from the stative of the verb stem
*bher-, quite obviously. Hence, clearly it's usage as an action
noun (something describing a _state_) makes sense.

Whereas, *bhor�s originates from the stative *bhor- + genitive
*-�s, giving the meaning of "of carrying, to do with carrying,
burdenful". The usage of the latter form is indiscutably
parallel to Latin /bella/ "beautiful/beautiful _one_" where
the distinction between adjective ("burdenful") and noun
("burdenful one" => "one who carries") is a blurry one.

I still don't get what your points are.


- love gLeN



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp