Re: Case question

On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 06:06:48PM +0100, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> > So . . . is an I-E tripartite language at all believable, or is
> > it beyond the pale?
>
> I'm no IEist, but if some IE langs could develop Monster Raving Loony systems,
Okay, I'm familiar with the party, but what does the term refer to
linguistically?

> and others turn split-ergative, I figure one turning tripartite isn't out of
> the question either.
Ah, I didn't know there were ergative IE languages; thought they were all
accusative.  What's "split-ergative"?

> Now, let's see what you do with neuters, which are clairvoyant in the
> classical IE scheme ...
They are indeed, as you say, clairvoyant.  For instance, masculine singular
has intransitive -o, nominative -os, accuastive -om, while
neuter singular has -o for all three.  And the neuter plural of
all three is the same as the collective/feminine singular intransitive
-a.

Not terribly original, to be sure, but it's also only the current
state; I haven't worked out all the sound changes yet, so the
endings are likely to morph somewhat.  So far, PIE /w/ -> /B/,
unstressed vowel + sonorant -> syllabic sonorant, and an
intervocalic voiced stop -> fricative.  That last change is
not allophonic, as in Spanish, but a stage in the phone development;
the modern language does in fact have some intervocalic voiced
stops.  These developed either from voiceless unaspirated stops or
in positions that were not originally intervocalic but have since
seen the insertion of a vowel.

-Mark

Replies