in: intensifying and negating

Sally:

Actually, it's a coincidence that Latin has "in" doing both jobs.  The
IE morphemes that the two "in"s come from are different: a negating
prefix, consisting of *vocalic N, and the preposition which shows up in
English as "in", which comes I think from *Hen where H is some laryngeal
or other.

It's a coincidence that in Latin they had the same reflex; in Greek they
show up differently: the negative prefix became a(n), while the
preposition turned up as "en".

I have no idea whether Welsh is a related case!

Ed

Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com