--- In nostratic@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:

>
> Now that we've established that Miguel's views on /txin/ coming
> from **tken are misguided and falsifiable, I still can't help but
> think about Uralic conjugation.
>
> I recently read a book published in 1965 that surveyed all of the
> Uralic languages and spoke about how they related to each other
> in terms of sounds correspondances and grammar. >

Hi!

I do not know very much about these things in the Uralic Branch as a
whole, but I can tell something about the verbal endings and the
possessive suffixes in finnish.


Verbal endings: -n<m, t, 0 (or wovel lengthening), mme, tte, vat/vät

Possessive suffixes: ni, si<ti, nsa/nsä, mme, nne,nsa/nsä

The possessive suffixes have a complicated story. They are actually a
contraction of a former plural suffixe -n- and a former suffixe more
or less identical to the verbal endings.



Ex: talo-ssa-mi in my house / talo-ssa-n-mi > talossa - ni in my
houses

Later on the plural ending -ni was generalized both to plural and
singular, and a new plural ending was introdused between the stem and
case ending so that in contemporary finnish:

talo-ssa-ni now means in my house / and talo-i-ssa-ni in my houses.

The same developement happened with the other endings.

Furthermore: Possessive suffixes are often added to infinitives and
participles: eks: oste-a-kse-ni so that I can by/In order to buy.


Such nominal forms furnished with possive suffixes often develope
into new finite verbal forms, in many languages. In finnish they
often are used to construct auxiliary sentences.

Furtermore The 3. person verbal suffixes are old active participles.

As far as I remember both the verbal endings and the possesive
suffixes at some time had the forms (I do not remember them
exactly): -me, te, -sa, mek, tek, sek?


This is just an example to show how complicated history apparently
simple elemants can have.

>
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