Re: my grammar

#1 wrote:
>                                   Nominative  Accusative
>
> Singular first person         pi              bi
> Singular second person        te              de
> Singular third person         ka              ga
>
> Plural   first person         pI              bI
> Plural   second person        tE              dE
> Plural   third person         ka~             ga~
You know, although this is unusual, I think one could rather
straightforwardly account for such a pattern by a few simple
diachronic sound changes.  The voicing of the accusative could
result from some prefixed vowel (perhaps schwa) which later gets
deleted.  Likewise, the vowel quality in the plurals could be
accounted for by some sort of nasal suffix, perhaps /n/, which
also gets deleted.  This would require one more change, however,
to collapse all nasalized high or mid vowels together with their
nonnasalized counterparts.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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