I noticed a pattern, one thats relatively easy to see if you lay it out in the form of a table. It seems like animate and inanimate case endings, at least with the nominative case, seem to correspond roughly with what one might expect from a split ergative case pattern. Animate being, or having developed from, an Ergative case; And Inanimate endings being the Absolutive form:
|
Nominal Endings for the Nominative, Vocative, and Accusative
Cases |
||||||
|
|
Animate |
Inanimate/Neuter |
||||
|
Singular |
Dual |
Plural |
Singular |
Dual |
Plural |
|
|
Nominative |
-s/-os
|
-h₁e /-oh₁e
|
-es |
-Ø/-om |
-ih₁/-oih₁ |
-h₂/-eh₂>-ā |
|
Vocative |
-Ø /-ĕ
|
-h₁e -oh₁e
|
-es |
-Ø/-om |
-ih₁/-oih₁ |
-h₂/-eh₂>-ā
|
|
Accusative |
-m/-om |
-h₁e/-oh₁e |
-ns |
-Ø/-om |
-ih₁/-oih₁ |
-h₂/-eh₂>-ā
|
See a pattern?
Now, there are other -h2- forms, of which use -h2- followed by case endings, which I believe could have been seperate case endings. I'm not sure if this table is accurate, its based on the wikipedia article, I was under the impression that neuter endings were seperate from the -h2- endings, which gave rise to the feminine nominal conjugation. I could be wrong, but which it derives from is irrelevant.
This pattern is also seen in Hittite, though with a different set of endings than what wikipedia has for ProtoIndoEuropean:
|
|
Animate Nouns |
Neuter/Inanimate/Common Nouns |
||
|
Singular |
Plural |
Singular |
Plural |
|
|
Nominative |
-as |
-ēs
|
-an |
-a |
|
Accusative |
-an |
-us |
-an |
-a |
Notice, that in both instances, the Nominative and Accusative endings for the Neuter/Inanimate are identical. Also, for Animate endings, the two are not identical. Also, outside of the Nominative and Accusative cases, the Animate and Neuter/Inanimate/Common Noun endings are indistinguishable.
This on its own is nothing special, except, we also know that Hittite Neuter nouns can't function as the subject of a transitive verb, rather, their endings must be replaced by Ergative Endings:
|
|
Animate |
Neuter |
||
|
Singular |
Plural |
Singular |
Plural |
|
|
Nominative |
-as |
-ēs
|
-an |
-a |
|
Ergative |
-as |
-ēs |
-anza |
-antēs |
|
Accusative |
-an |
-us |
-an |
-a |
It's also known that NeoHittite slowly began to confuse Nominative and Accusative Animate plural endings, possibly another indicator of an association between the two. Then again, this easily could be related to the fact that Hittite neighbored and even had a substrate that was an Ergative language. So this need not necessarily be an archaic feature preserved in Hittite.
Its thought that the Ergative case endings for Hittite Neuter nouns originated from a derivationalized form of a suffix -ant-. I'd like to point out that its similar to the Imperfect participle, and 3rd person plural -nt- endings, which are also Active in ProtoIndoEuropean. Perhaps this is the origin of the Ergative case marker?
Active-Nominative Sing. -nt-s>-nz, -nt-es>-entes
The construction seems built upon the animate endings.
A reconstruction of the original paradigm, if ProtoIndoEuropean at some point in its history was a Split Ergative language, it might have looked something like this:
A Possible Reconstruction of ProtoIndoEuropean's Morphosyntactic Case System
|
|
Singular |
Dual |
Plural |
|
Nominative |
-Ø/-om
|
-ih₁/-oih₁
|
-h₂/-eh₂>-ā
|
|
Ergative |
-s/-os
|
-h₁e /-oh₁e
|
-es |
|
Accusative |
-m/-om |
-h₁e/-oh₁e
|
-ns
|
The beauty of this system is that, the only thing that is lost are the use of "Nominative Dual and Plural" endings to mark the Accusative in Neuter Nouns. As the Neuter paradigm is lost. Though as can be seen from -h2- reconstructions, -h2m can be reconstructed for the Accusative, so all is not really lost.
Also, the Vocative and the Nominative/Oblique, in my view, would have originally been the same case. This makes the Nominative-Vocative very similar to what we find in ProtoUralic, though I can get to the similarities between IE and U in another post.
For more thoughts on the Ergative Case in PIE:
http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art049e.pdf
https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/DLLS/article/viewFile/31178/29637
https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/jspui/bitstream/10593/7433/1/PSiCL_44_4_Bavant.pdf
I realize that there are critics of this theory, but I don't quite think that the case is closed on Ergativity in PIE; far from it.
