Re: Indo-European question
| From: | Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, June 17, 2001, 22:09 |
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> Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 18:39:46 -0500
> From: Patrick Dunn <tb0pwd1@...>
>
> I just ordered a dictionary of Indo-European roots to play with, and I
> started wondering -- how did we get inflectional endings?
>
> Were they originally postpositions which became attached to the nouns?
> If so, why do they seem to differ among languages so much? -um in Old
> English marks the plural dative, but in Latin -um marks the accusative and
> neuter of some nouns.
Since everybody else has addressed Latin -ae, I'll do this one: The
reason is coincidence. According to Beekes 1995:
PIE o-stem acc.sg. was -om, which went to -an and then -a in Germanic,
while remaining relatively recognizable as -um in Latin.
PIE o-stem dat.pl was -omus, which went to -omiz and then -am in
Germanic; the -m was generalized to all stem classes. Latin picked the
original instr.pl. ending -ois > -i:s for dat/abl.pl., and so has no
cognate for this morpheme.
Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)
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