Uralic and IE

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Glen Gordon" <glengordon01 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>MIGUEL:
> Well, I maintain that **-t > *-H1.  Witness the Hittite instr.
> -it > PIE *-(e)H1 [Beekes].  Also **-ent > **-erH1 > -e:r.

>But are we assured that Hittite -it can only derive from a form like
>*-eH1, as opposed to endings like *-od [ablative] or *-dhi that would
>follow a more oft-seen sound correspondance? You've had this idea for a
>while now and no doubt, being that you strike me as a good chess player,
>you've contemplated firm answers long ago to the questions I'm going to
>pose but here we go...

>This would mean that IE *-H1 becomes Hittite -t?

No.  -t becomes -H1.  We have **-et (Hitt. -it) > *-eH1, but
**-od (Hitt. -az < *-od-s) remains as *-od.  In the secondary
verbal endings -(e)t and -(e)nt, -t has probably been restored
analogically from -(e)ti, -(e)nti, but we also have
lautgesetzlich -e:r < **-ent.  And maybe (this just occurred to
me, so bear with me) **-t > *-H1 can explain some of the
lengthened grade preterites around.

Final -s remains after a vowel, but **-Cs also becomes the
equivalent of *-H1C (lengthened nominatives).

While some traces of *-t have remained, we have no trace at all
of *-k and *-p in PIE.  It is tempting to reason by analogy and
hypothesize that if **-t > *-H1, then **-p > *-H3 and **-k >
*-H2.  In the case of *k ~ *H2 we have just a few interesting
clues, such as Grk. gune:, pl. gunaikes "women".

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam