IE pers.pron. (dual forms)

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Ralf-Stefan and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf-Stefan Georg <Georg at home.ivm.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 3:57 AM

Pat wrote:

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

R-S responded:

> 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 !

Pat answers:

I do not think we are really disagreeing here. Let me clarify what I said,
and I hope you will agree.

I do believe that simple forms and less extensive categories of expression
came first. That does not mean that *all* "simpler" forms are the basis for
"less simple" forms but it leads to a strong presumption that a "simpler"
form is the retained basis of a "less simple" form.

Fortunately, in many cases, we can historically document the presence of a
"simpler" form earlier in time than the "less simple" form, which
substantiates the presumption.

When we cannot, the possibility of a "less simple" form being "abbreviated"
to a "simpler form" exists but do we not need more than the existence of a
possibility to assert it.

In the matter under discussion, someone may be able to tell us, in the
historical record, if <jam> is attested earlier than <jamui>.

R-S continued:

> 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 ;-).

Pat answers:

I think the linchpin of your objection is "always", which, if I implied it,
did so inadvertently. I do, however, based on just the line of reasoning you
have indicated in your last paragraph, believe that the preferred
explanation is derivation and only conflicting data should force us to
affirm abbreviation.

Pat

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