Re: Proto-Uralic?

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 11:01:39 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg=20Rhiemeier?=
<joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:

>This "active" type is something that seems to have been present
>in an earlier stage of PIE as well.  If you look at it from the right
angle,
>you can see the shards of it lying around just about anywhere
>in the PIE grammar: the syncretism of nominate and accusative
>in the neuter gender; the *s-/*t- suppletivism in demonstrative
>pronouns; the active and stative conjugations (*-m, *-s, *-t
>vs. *-h2e, *-th2e, *-e); the tendency of some of the older
>IE languages to avoid neuter transitive subjects.
>
>Jörg.
I think I just discovered something regarding the PIE stative conjugation.

Here's a sample conjugation of the PIE stative verb woid- "know":

woid-h2e   "I know"
woid-th2e  "you know"
woid-e     "he knows"

Here's a sample conjugation of the Classical Arabic verb ktb- "read" in the
imperfect aspect:

?a-ktubu   "I am/was reading"
ta-ktubu   "you are/were reading"
ya-ktubu   "he is/was reading"

Do you see the similarities?  The Classical Arabic imperfect personal
prefixes are very similar to the PIE stative personal suffixes.  If they
indeed have the same origin, we can amend the reconstructed PIE forms to:

1sg *-?a (or perhaps *-ha, if an earlier glottal stop merged with a
laryngal spirant)
2sg *-t(h)a (or perhaps *-t-?a/-t-ha)
3sg *-ya (or perhaps *-i-?a/-i-ha ?)

Also, I suggest that the personal endings in PIE occurred before there was
any set plural inflection with the pronouns, due to the fact that the
plural personal suffixes for both active and stative paradigms are very
similar (and thus have the same origin).

- Rob