-n- adjectival suffix in Latin

Patrick C. Ryan proto-language at email.msn.com
Wed Aug 11 23:46:31 UTC 1999


Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Sunday, August 08, 1999 7:41 PM

>The suffix involved must be *-ino-, a common suffix
> of appurtenance, particularly well attested in derivatives from names of
> seasons and other time spans, as Gk. earino's, OCS vesnInU 'of spring'. It
> was plausibly derived by Chantraine from the locative of the season name,
> which was typically an r/n-stem, as *we's-n-i 'in spring', adding the
> "thematic vowel" *-o- (the real seat of the expression of appurtenance),
> with a histus-filling ("ephelcystic") *-n- in between, and dissimilation
> of the product *-ni-n-o- to *-ri-n-o-.

Pat comments:

Sorry. If this seems "plausible" to you and Chantraine, it seems absolutely
unlikely to me. And since when is -*o a suffix expressing "appurtenance"?

And what about Avestan vangri, 'in spring' (probably better 'of the spring,
springlike')?

Jens continued:

> The r/n stem seems to have been
> generalized for all seasons, cf. the beautiful pair Lat. hi:bernus = Gk.
> kheimerino's equated by Szemere'nyi as IE *g'heimerinos (with dissim. in
> Lat.). The part -rnus was repeated with other designations of time in
> Lat., as diurnus (from the loc. diu:, the "endingless" variant of Skt.
> dya'v-i) and from there noct-urnus (if not from noctu:, itself copied on
> diu: at a time when this still meant 'throughout the day, all day long'
> and not just 'long').

Pat comments:

It seems to me you are just making a muddle of two separate items; 1) -n
in -r/n stems, and a totally separate -i-no (from -i + -no).

Jens continued:

>    The special meaning of the old derivatives in *-ino- makes it sensible
> to derive them from the locative: *wesr-ino-s is 'what is _in_ spring'.

Pat comments:

I disagree. The oldest locative (and locative properly means 'at' not 'in')
for IE is, as Beekes indicates, -0 or -:. Locative -i is properly the
adjective formant which shows up in e.g. Latin genitives.

Jens continued:

> This distinguishes *-ino- from the suffix *-io- which has no such obvious
> connection with the locative (although it has been argued to have
> precisely that origin). A derivative like *ek'wi-o-s 'pertaining to a
> horse' does not signify thing on or inside a horse with any preference
> over things connected with a horse in a non-local fashion, so the suffix
> form *-i-o- is simply the product of the addition of a "thematic vowel"
> *-o- to the bare stem normally posited as *ek'wo-, in which we observe the
> transformation of two thematic vowels to *-i-o-.

Pat comments:

Ah, a transubstantiation! If a theoretical *ek^wo- + -o formalized a glide,
it would not doubt have been -w- not -y-. This is, IMHO, the most unlikely
proposal you have yet made on this list.

Jens continued:

> I see this as a simple
> consequence of the reduction rule of an unaccented thematic vowel to *-i-
> applying in very old lexicalizations;

Pat interjects:

There is no such rduction rule!

Jens continued:

> since _both_ thematic vowels could
> not be accented, the product *-i-o- may simply be from *-o- + *-o-. It
> seems that the addition of a syllabic morpheme shifted the accent towards
> the end, so that *-o'- yielded *-o-o'- whence *-i-o'-. It should not be
> held against the analysis that examples with an independent accent show
> *-i'-o- with accent of the -i- part, for that would be the further
> development anyway if the form is older than the introduction of initial
> accent I claim to have discovered for a prestage of PIE. This analysis
> provides an answer to the question why there is no *-n- in *-i-o-: there
> was no word boundary here, while in the hypostatic derivatives based on
> locatives in *-i as *-ri-n-o- there was.
>    A preform like *p at 2teri-n-o-s may indeed have existed in IE, but then
> with the specific meaning 'which is at the father'; but it may just as
> well reflect a simple Latin (Italic) analogy with the season-based
> adjectives.

Pat interjects:

"Father" --- a man for all seasons!

Jens continued:

> In Balto-Slavic *-ino- enjoyed an enormous productivity (Russ.
> vostok 'east', vosto{cv}nyj 'eastern' from *-k-ino-s). This has nothing to
> do with the -n- of Germanic n-stems which turns up wherever the stem final
> is allowed to surface, not only in the genitive. For 'pertaining to a
> father', the conglomerate *-io- of thematic stems was generalized and had
> created *p at 2tr-i'o-s in PIE already.
>    Thus, the -n- is not in origin a morpheme of appurtenance or of a
> genitival relation, and so there is no point in equating it with something
> outside of IE which is.

Pat comments:

Strongly disagree. n-formants are very common outside of IE as
individulizers; the simple application of *na, 'one'.

Pat
PATRICK C. RYAN (501) 227-9947; FAX/DATA (501)312-9947 9115 W. 34th St.
Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803 and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit
ek, at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim
meipi er mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)



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