>That's circular. Were it not for the fact that it's the familiar
>pronominal (and from there, o-stem) gen. ending, [...]

You're missing the real heart of the matter: *-yo is more evidently
an attachment to the existing genitive in *-os, rather than the
solution of **-osy-o which ignore syllabics ad adsurdum. And, yes,
BY COMMON CONSENSUS, *-os-yo from the demonstrative *yo- remains
the most probable theory. Why are you insisting on your inferior
theory?

>Since genitives usually develop out of adjectives, [...]

Not "usually". If they are so "usual" as you say, you'll probably
be able to list at least 20 of these languages out of the thousands
that have existed throughout time in your next post. I'll wait...

I know of many languages with case systems where this isn't the
case at all. Often, the origins of the genitive case are steeped in
the remote past and are difficult to retrieve anyways. However, in
all likelihood, they most often form out of locative constructs (eg:
"The book is with me" => "The book is mine") as in Altaic
languages.

>it is interesting to note that Luwian has no genitive, and uses
>the i-stem adjective -assi-s to make pseudo-genitives.

How can you tell if they are "pseudo-genitives" if they're being
used as proper genitives... You wanna talk about "circular"??

>Note also that the Etr. gen. in -s can be reconstructed as *-si,
>on the basis of the compound endings Gen+Gen=Abl and Gen+Loc=Dat:

Yet another unsubstantiable assumption � la Miguel. Again, the
most common and level-headed view is that the Etruscan genitive
is simply a genitive, probably ultimately related to the
IndoEuropean genitive in *-�s/*-s because of many other parallels
that exist between the two languages.

>I'm puzzled. What has any of this to do with the real IE aorist?
>We have the athematic root aorist, [...]

Yes, like *doxt "he gives". But I obviously wasn't talking about
that aorist form. This is to do with stems that are inheirantly
aorist to begin with. Their life might have began in IndoTyrrhenian
where they had *-a- vocalism but were conjugated with the *m-set
endings. It turns out that IndoTyrrhenian might have already
developed the durative-aorist-perfect aspectual contrast, later
becoming a tensual system in Tyrrhenian (durative => present-future,
aorist => past imperfect, perfect => past perfect).

>We have the thematic root aorist, with root in zero grade:
>
>*bhr-�-m, *bhr-�-s, *bhr-�-t
>*bhr-�-me, *bhr-�-te, *bhr-�-nt

Yes, that's the one. Although, in hindsight, I think it should
be *bhebhr�t, with reduplication, no? Paradigmatic strengthening
is used to avoid obscuring the paradigm with otherwise zero-graded,
syllable-less roots as in our **pd-os example. Your **bhret is
annoyingly "obscure" and probably impossible. So perhaps
*bhebhr-�t is in order? (The reduplication would be another
means of avoiding paradigmatic obscurity, as opposed to *tud-�t
where *tud- _is_ syllabic.) So... again, the MIE forms would be:


*ber�m-e *berem�s-e
*ber�s-e *beret�-he
*ber�-he *beren�-he

Which would have become, after vowel loss:

**br�m **brm�s
**br�s **brt�:
**br�(:)t **br�(:)nt

However, vowelless roots are icky in IE paradigms, so reduplication
came to the rescue before the vowels were completely wiped out...

*bebr�m *bebrem�s
*bebr�s *bebret�:
*bebr�(:)t *bebr�(:)nt

And then, by Late IE, everything was leveled out to:

*bhebhr�m *bhebhrom�s
*bhebhr�s *bhebhret�
*bhebhr�t *bhebhr�nt

>We have the athematic s-aorist, with root in lengthened grade
>(originally only in 2+3 sg., by Szemer�nyi's rule):

This is something else, caused by the aorist affix *-s-
used to convert inheirantly durative stems.

>And we have the thematic s-aorist, with root in zero grade:

A hybrid of the two above that doesn't concern Mid IE or what
I was saying.

>You're ignoring the whole problem. There is no reason for
>paradigmatic strengthening in a CeR root like *bher-. In fact,
>zero grade *bhr- is common enough.

It depends on whether your monosyllabic **bhret is a substantiated
form, as opposed to, say... *bhebhr�t (Actually, I'll have to
look this up but I swear it's firmly found in Sanskrit). Anyways,
with *bhebhr�t, the vocalism is explainable under my theory since
a MIE *beber�me would normally become *bhebhr�m, figuring in
the syllabic constraints which forbid all unstressed vowels from
disappearing here.

> >>root in long grade: *bho:r-os, *swe:kur-os
>
>The thematic vowel does [have everything to do with accent].
>The question is why?

I fail to understand what you're getting at. Accented long vowels
alternated with unaccented short vowels by Early Late IE, so what?

>No, it's the regular development of the thematic vowel in final
>position. Vocative *-e, Imperative 2sg. *-e.

But the imperative is formed via the same analogy. Even in
English, we hear "Hey there!" (vocative) and "Play another tune,
there" (imperative). At least that's heard in Manitoba. Not sure
about BC though.

At any rate, the connection with the locative *e for both the
above is obvious and so your statement remains, at best, an
equally likely possibility. Unfortunately, given *-osyo which
ends cheekily in *-o, your theory falls flat on its face and mine
prevails.

- love gLeN




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