IE pers.pron. (dual forms)

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

>>  I believe it is beyond unreasonable to suggest that jam is
>> a reduction of jamui! Simple always comes before complex.

So, if the assumption that English is an IE language is still with us,
English morphology is older/more original than that of, say, Vedic or Greek
? French than Latin ? Good heavens !

It may of course be in line with common sense that, in order to get a very
complex system (say, of verbal forms, as e.g. in Ket or Navajo), it has to
be "built up" somehow by several successive stages of grammaticalization. A
fortiori it is reasonable to think that such complex systems have some sort
of a "simpler" pre-history. I think this is basically what you have in
mind. But to derive from this a principle which says that always the
"simpler" (i.e. shorter) form in any given pair of attested ones is the
primary one is, well, for want of a better word, hair-raising (no, this I
time I won't take that back ;-).

St.

Stefan Georg
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