--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Fri, 30 May 2003 21:08:18 +0000, Rob <magwich78@...> wrote:
>
> >On another topic, where do you think your reconstructed stative
> >endings *-ku and *-tku came from?
>
> First person *-ku (*-kV) seems not to be related at all to first
> person *mu (*ni). I have no idea where it came from. Being stative
> endings, one might think of analyzing *0-ku and *t-ku, where *ku

might

> stand for "to be". But that's just a wild guess.
>

Regrettably, the PIE stative paradigm is one of the hardest things to
figure out. I have no clear inklings as to where it came from.

Did Proto-Uralic have a stative paradigm? It doesn't seem like it
did; if it didn't, then either it abandoned the inherited stative
paradigm or the stative paradigms of PIE and Semitic were independent
developments.

Miguel, while I think your reconstructions are interesting, I'm not
sure if I entirely agree with them. What's inherent in your
theorizing is that Nostratic was far closer to Afrasian than any
other branch. I'm not sure if I agree. It seems to me that Afrasian
diverged from the other members of Nostratic very early; many aspects
of its syntax and morphology are very different from the other
daughter languages of Nostratic. What I prefer to believe is that
what would later become Afrasian was the "innovating center" of
Nostratic, and other more conservative dialects (PIE, PU, PK, PA)
were more on the periphery. I also think that Nostratic must have
been mainly isolating, since this is the most likely explanation for
the shift in syntax that we see in Afrasian (SOV > VSO, postpositions

> prepositions).

- Rob