Re: Evidence for Nostratic? (was Re: Proto-Uralic?)

From: "Christopher Wright" <faceloran@...>
> Rob Haden palsalge:
> > PIE *kerd and *genu are inanimate nouns.  The reconstructed form
> > for 'foot' is *pots, which I think may be erroneous.  Latin has pes,
> > pedis; Greek has pous, podos.  These point to a problem with current
> > reconstructed PIE: what was the original genitive suffix, *-es or *-os?
> > Perhaps we can find the answer to this question.
>
> With a time machine, surely. Are there some IE languages with a genitive
> suffix in -Xs, where X is a back vowel other than /o/? If these are few,
> I'd say that it's most likely -es. Of course, it could have been both.
It may have been both (or possibly neither, or dependent on ablaut, or
somesuch), and levelled either one way or another in most places.

Germanic and Balto-Slavic point to *-es and Celtic and Greek to *-os for root
noun genitives, the original vowel of the Indo-Iranian is unrecoverable, and
Italic seems to have -is (from -es) and -us (from -os) attested.

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/