The externalization of inflection in Indoeuropean pronouns and *-sm enlargement

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.31810/RSEL.49.10

Abstract

Cross-linguistic studies show that languages follow clear tendencies in the ordering of morphemes inside a word that have been variously accounted for in the scholarly literature. Morphological structures, however, are not immune to change and the order of morphemes can be altered in the history of a language due to various kinds of processes, thus leading to an unusual order inside the word. The expected order of morphemes can be restored in different ways, one of which is the externalization of inflection. There are interesting examples of this type of processes in the pronominal inflection of the ancient Indo-European languages, which provide relevant information about this type of change.
After revising those processes, we focus on the analysis of the *-sm-enlargement –apparently devoid of any semantic content– that appears in the oblique cases of certain Indo-European demonstrative pronouns (such as Skt. tásmai, Goth. Þamma, OPrus. stesmu, etc.) and in some cases of the 1st and 2nd plural personal pronouns (Skt. asmā́n and yuṣmā́n, Gk. hēmeîs and hūmeîs, etc.). We carry out a thorough survey of those forms and provide evidence to support the idea that this -sm-enlargement was originally an emphatic particle that has been ‘trapped’ between the pronominal stem and the nominal endings and we interpret the data in the light of the processes mentioned above.

Keywords: morphology; ordering of morphemes; inflection; externalization of inflection; trapped morphology; personal pronouns; demonstratives; interrogatives; particles; Indo-European.