Person Marking in Indo-European

Previous treatments of the problems of suppletion in the stems of the Indo-European (IE) first & second person pronouns & their relationsip to verb endings are reviewed, & it is suggested that the recent interpretation of Pre-IE as a language of active typology provides an explanation for first person stem (1P) contrasts. A parallel from Tupinamba, a Tupi-Guarani language, is adduced to support a claim that the Pre-IE 1P singular m marker, seen in the Proto-IE oblique 1P pronoun stem & the 1P present /aorist ending, originally marked the object of transitive verbs & the subject of nonagentive intransitive verbs. A distinct pronominal form *egh marked the 1P subject of transitive & agentive intransitive verbs. Modification of this system to a nominative/accusative system ensued from the typological shift between Pre- & Proto-IE. On similar grounds, the second person singular ending -s & the third person singular ending -t are interpreted as deictic markers of animate & inanimate reference, respectively, & related to the demonstrative stems *so- & *to-. The importance of language type in the interpretation of protolanguages is stressed. 26 References. J. Hitchcock