In the Indo-European department of Leiden University, Alwin Kloekhorst has initiated a discussion on Hittite ammuk ‘me’. The central question is: where did the geminate come from? This has led me to reconsider the origin of the Indo-European personal pronouns against the background of my reconstruction of Indo-Uralic (2002: 221-225). For the historical data I may refer to Schmidt (1978)

Kortlandt, Frederik H. H.

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Frederik Kortlandt – Leiden University – www.kortlandt.nl HITTITE AMMUK ‘ME’ FREDERIK KORTLANDT In the Indo-European department of Leiden University, Alwin Kloekhorst has ini-tiated a discussion on Hittite ammuk ‘me’. The central question is: where did the geminate come from? This has led me to reconsider the origin of the Indo-European personal pronouns against the background of my reconstruction of Indo-Uralic (2002: 221-225). For the historical data I may refer to Schmidt (1978). On the basis of the Indo-European evidence, the personal pronouns can be re-constructed as follows (cf. Beekes 1995: 207-211, Cowgill 1965: 169f.): Singular 1st  2nd  reflexive nom. *ʔeg- *tu-  – acc. *ʔme *tue  *sue gen. *ʔmene *teue  *seue abl. *ʔmed *tued  *sued dat. *ʔmighi *tubhi  *subhi loc. *ʔmoi *toi  *soi poss. *ʔmos *tuos  *suos  Dual 1st  2nd   nom. *ueʔ- *iuʔ-  acc. *nʔue *uʔe  gen. *noʔ *uoʔ  abl. *nʔued *uʔed  dat. *nʔuebhi *uʔebhi  loc. *nʔui *uʔi   Plural 1st  2nd   nom. *ue-  *iu-   acc. *nsme  *usme   gen. *nos *uos  abl. *nsmed  *usmed   dat. *nsmei  *usmei   loc. *nsmi  *usmi   poss. *nsos  *usos   FREDERIK KORTLANDT  2 Here *ʔ stands for the glottal stop *H1. The reconstruction of initial *ʔm- is based on Greek and Armenian. The reconstruction of the dative forms *ʔmighi, *tubhi, *subhi is based on Italic *mihei (cf. Oscan sífeí), Sanskrit túbhyam, and the Balto-Slavic forms, which point to dat.-loc. *minoi, *tubhoi, *subhoi, e.g. Polish mnie, tobie, sobie (similarly in Czech and Old Russian, but te-, se- from the gen.-acc. form in South Slavic and modern Russian), East Baltic dial. mu- from *tu- (cf. Endzelin 1971: 187), Old Prussian subs ‘self’. While Sanskrit preserved the dual paradigms remarkably well, Greek evidently generalized full grade *noʔ-. The same generalization in the corresponding form *uoʔ- and the reanalysis of the pro-nominal stem as *w- may have provoked the replacement of the latter by s- < *tw- from the singular and subsequently by sph- on the basis of the dat.-inst. form sphi, which apparently replaced first *subhi on the model of loc. *soi and later *tubhi after dat.-loc. soi < *twoi. As a result, we find Greek sph- in the 2nd dual and 3rd plural forms. The reconstructed accusatives *ʔme (or *mme), *tue (or *twe), *nʔue (or *nHwe), *uʔe (or *uwe), *nsme, *usme have given rise to different interpretations. It has been proposed that the distinction between *-me and *-ue reflects plural ver-sus dual number (Cowgill 1965: 169), first versus second person (Katz 1998: 279), or a phonological split (Meyer 1997: 101–104). None of these proposals explains the actual distribution of the endings, in particular the short root vowel -u- in all case forms of Sanskrit yuvám ‘ye two’ and the fact that we never find *u twice in the same pronominal form. This strongly suggests that all instances of *u in the personal pronouns have a single origin. For Indo-Uralic we can reconstruct the pronouns *mi ‘I’, *me ‘we’, *ti ‘thou’, *te ‘you’, demonstratives *e/i, *t-, *s-, reflexive *u/w, dual *-ki, plural *-t in heads and *-i in dependent forms, genitive *-n, case particles acc. *m, loc. *i, abl. *t, adessive *pi (cf. Collinder 1960: 237, 243, Kortlandt 2002 and 2004a), where acc. *m and abl. *t may represent earlier *me and *te. Sound laws which are relevant in the present context include IE *s < IU *ti (e.g. in nom.pl. *-es beside *-i and abl.sg. *-os beside *-d), IE *e < all IU vowels under the stress except word-final high vowels and zero grade elsewhere, then IE *o < *u (syllabic *w) in unstressed syllables, then IE *o < *e in cliticized forms, and the (Indo-Uralic) lenition of *p, *t, *k to *b(h), *d(h), *g(h) in weak syllables and word-finally (cf. Kortlandt 2002: 221f. and 2004b). The Indo-European thematic flexion was built on an ergative case form in *-os (cf. Beekes 1985: 191-195) which still functions as the gen.-abl. form of the consonant stems in the historical languages. The possessives in *-os thus represent the earlier ablative of the personal pronouns while the new ablative in *-ed is built on the accusative, like the locatives *nsmi and *usmi and the da-tives *nsmei and *usmei as well as the corresponding dual forms. This essentially reduces the problem of the stem formation to the nom. acc. gen. forms and to the dat. and loc. forms of the singular. HITTITE AMMUK ‘ME’  3 Here the question arises: how did the apparently simple and transparent pro-nominal system of Indo-Uralic develop into the much more complicated and opaque Indo-European system? The answer to this question lies primarily in the assibilation of *ti to *si and the rise of ablaut which reduced all non-final vowels to *e under the stress and zero grade elsewhere. As a result, we expect the follow-ing outcome: Independent stressed  unstressed  Indo-Uralic ‘I, me’  *mi, *me-  *m-  *mi ‘myself’ *mu,  *me-  *m-  *mu ‘we, us’  *me, *me-  *m-  *me ‘thou, thee’  *si, *se-  *s-  *ti ‘yourself’ *tu,  *te-  *t-  *tu ‘ye, you’  *te, *te-  *t-  *te  Dependent stressed  unstressed Indo-Uralic ‘I, me’  *men  *mn-  *min ‘myself’ *men  *mn-  *mun ‘we, us’  *men  *mn-  *men ‘thou, thee’  *sen  *sn-  *tin ‘yourself’ *ten  *tn-  *tun ‘ye, you’  *ten  *tn-  *ten It is clear that this system could not be maintained. Moreover, the stem form *s- < *ti for the second person interfered with the Indo-Uralic demonstrative *s-, which is preserved in the Indo-European anaphoric pronoun *so. The large-scale ho-mophony was eliminated by the use of deictic *ʔe ‘this’ for the first person singu-lar and *ue ‘self’ for a person who is contrasted with another (third) person and by the suffixation of *-ʔ < *-ki for the dual and *-i, later *-s < *-ti for the plural. This resulted in such forms as *ʔme ‘this-me’, *tue ‘thee-self’, *sue ‘him-self’ (cf. Kort-landt 2002: 225), also *ueʔ, *uei ‘(our)selves’ in contrast with outsiders (inclusive meaning) versus *(m)neʔ, *(m)nes ‘ours’ in contrast with your people (exclusive meaning), *ueʔ, *ues ‘yours’ in contrast with other people, then *uʔe ‘you two’ in contrast with them and *nʔue ‘we two’ in contrast with both you and them. These forms must have existed at an early stage already because the o-vocalism of *noʔ, *nos, *uoʔ, *uos originated in their use as clitics and we find the corresponding zero grade in acc.pl. *nsme, *usme, where *-me can hardly be anything else than the full grade IU case particle *me. On the other hand, the forms *teue and *seue show the continued existence of *te, *se, *ue as separate words at the stage when full grade *e in unstressed syllables became possible. Now we turn to the case endings. It appears that gen. *men ‘me’ was remodeled to *mene on the basis of *teue and *seue. Contrary to my earlier view (2002: 223), FREDERIK KORTLANDT  4 I now think that dat. *mighi represents original *mibhi with dissimilation of the labial articulation because I cannot otherwise explain the differentiation from *tubhi and *subhi. These forms seem to preserve IU *mi ‘I’, *tu ‘thou-self’, and *pi ‘at’. There is no reason to assume an initial laryngeal in *mighi and *mene if these directly continue IU nom. *mi and gen. *min. Indeed, the laryngeal may have been limited to acc. *ʔme, loc. *ʔmoi, and poss. *ʔmos, where it is preserved in Greek. It was evidently introduced at an early stage from the nominative *ʔeg-, which contains the deictic element *ʔe- ‘this’ and the emphatic particle *g(e) which is also found in acc. Greek emége, Gothic mik, Hittite ammuk. The absence of *-u- in the locatives *toi and *soi suggests to me that we have *o < *u rather than *o < *e here, while the form *ʔmoi can easily be analogical. Hittite appears to have preserved the original IU pronoun *ti (with restored *t-) in nom. zik ‘thou’, as opposed to *tu ‘thou-self’ in the other IE languages. On the other hand, nom. uk ‘I’ seems to reflect *ʔe-u- ‘this-self’, which is not found else-where, similarly ammuk ‘me’ beside tuk ‘thee’. The latter form may have origi-nated from generalization of the zero grade in *tu-g(e), which suggests the possi-bility that *ʔme-g(e) and *ʔu-g(e) were conflated into *ʔm-ʔu-g(e), yielding ammuk. REFERENCES Beekes, Robert S.P.  1985  The origins of the Indo-European nominal inflection (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft). 1995  Comparative Indo-European linguistics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Collinder, Björn 1960  Comparative grammar of the Uralic languages (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wik-sell). Cowgill, Warren 1965  Evidence in Greek. Evidence for laryngeals (The Hague: Mouton), 142-180. Endzelin, Jan  1971  Comparative phonology and morphology of the Baltic languages (The Hague: Mouton). Katz, Joshua T.  1998  Archaische keltische Personalpronomina aus indogermanischer Sicht. Sprache und Kultur der Indogermanen (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft), 265-291. Kortlandt, Frederik 2002  The Indo-Uralic verb. Finno-Ugrians and Indo-Europeans: Linguistic and liter-ary contacts (Maastricht: Shaker), 217-227. Electronic edition: www.kortlandt.nl/publications 2004a  Nivkh as a Uralo-Siberian language. Per aspera ad asteriscos [Fs. Rasmussen] (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft), 285-289. 2004b Indo-Uralic  consonant  gradation.  Etymologie, Entlehnungen und Entwicklungen [Fs. Koivulehto] (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique), 163-170. HITTITE AMMUK ‘ME’  5 Meyer, Denise P.  1997  Greek pronouns in sph- and the PIE personal pronominal system. Historische Sprachforschung 110, 93-108. Schmidt, Gernot 1978  Stammbildung und Flexion der indogermanischen Personalpronomina (Wiesba-den: Otto Harrassowitz). 

a Nivkh as a Uralo-Siberian language. Per aspera ad asteriscos [Fs. Rasmussen] (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft),

Archaische keltische Personalpronomina aus indogermanischer Sicht. Sprache und Kultur der Indogermanen (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft),

b Indo-Uralic consonant gradation. Etymologie, Entlehnungen und Entwicklungen [Fs. Koivulehto] (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique),

Comparative grammar of the Uralic languages (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell).

Comparative Indo-European linguistics (Amsterdam:

Comparative phonology and morphology of the Baltic languages (The Hague:

Evidence for laryngeals (The Hague:

Greek pronouns in sph- and the PIE personal pronominal system.

Stammbildung und Flexion der indogermanischen Personalpronomina (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz).

The Indo-Uralic verb. Finno-Ugrians and Indo-Europeans: Linguistic and literary contacts

The origins of the Indo-European nominal inflection (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft).

Hittite ammuk 'me'

Hittite ammuk 'me'

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