IE pers.pron. (dual forms)

[Richard M. Alderson III]

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote on Tue, 27 Apr 1999:

>>[ Moderator's comment:
>>  The final -u in the Sanskrit dual is not Indo-European, but an Indic
>>  development that is not present even in Iranian.
>>  --rma ]

>It is present in Goth. ahtau, Skt. aSta:/-au, Av. ashta. It appears to be a
>special Indic _choice_ out of an Indo-Iranian pair of sandhi variants which
>proceed from an IE pair of variants.

The final <au> in Gothic is a spelling of [O], and does not bear on the
presence or absence of a final *-u in the Indo-European dual, nor is it
entirely clear that the word for '8' is a dual.

The Skt. -u is an extension from the u-stems via sandhi variants to the other
stem formations.  Or so I was taught.

								Rich Alderson