Gk gen plural

petegray petegray at btinternet.com
Thu Jan 4 09:42:56 UTC 2001


> Wouldn't they both end up the same? ...  I'm not sure in what
> circumstances in Greek you could expect to see a difference between the
> result of -aso:m and -aH2o:m.

This was my point.   Several authors confidently assert that the pronominal
ending -asom was adopted into Greek as well as into Latin, but I can see no
evidence for this assertion at all.

The only argument I can see is from probability:  Latin and Greek both
borrow the pronominal nominative plural, Latin/Italic borrows the pronominal
genitive plural, so perhaps Greek also did - but the books seem to make
statements more strongly than that.   (e.g. Szemerenyi p190 "Latin and Greek
... both from -a:som .. the pronominal ending."  Beekes, on the other hand,
avoids this error.)

I'm glad I haven't overlooked some obvious bit of evidence!

Peter



More information about the Indo-european mailing list