Re: OT: sorta OT: cases: please help...

On Friday, December 7, 2001, at 02:49 , Muke Tever wrote:

> From: "Yoon Ha Lee" <yl112@...>
>> And why *are* copulas highly irregular in those languages where they are?
>> I'm not completely convinced, offhand, by "common word" status; is there
>> some other or additional underlying reason, or is it all buried in the
>> mists of time?  :-)  Anyone?
>
> Well, for Indo-European languages, the main verb was *es-, which was all
> of:
>     short (not a full CVC root),
>     had /s/ (which was treated brutally in daughter langs)
>     athematic (ISTR..)
>
<laugh>  (Not at you; thanks to you and others for the enlightening
etymology!)  I just have this sudden vision of a poor little /s/ crying
off in a corner after it's been abused for the n+1st time...<G>

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofvelis.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

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