On Indo-European superlative suffixes
ABSTRACT: The goal of this paper is to provide some insights into the degree morphology of the ancient IE languages, specifically the superlative suffixes *‑is-to- and *‑is- ̊mo-, which have a wider dialectal distribution and could go back to PIE. The relationship of those superlative suffixes to or...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2019 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) |
| Repositorio: | Docta Complutense |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/94150 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/94150 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | 811.1/.2'373.611 811.1/.2'373.61 811.1/.2'366 Degree morphology Superlatives Ordinals Suffixation Morphological change Analogy Filología |otras filologías| Lingüística 57 Lingüística 5705.08 Semántica 5702.02 Etimología |
| Sumario: | ABSTRACT: The goal of this paper is to provide some insights into the degree morphology of the ancient IE languages, specifically the superlative suffixes *‑is-to- and *‑is- ̊mo-, which have a wider dialectal distribution and could go back to PIE. The relationship of those superlative suffixes to ordinal suffixes is known, but its nature has not been appropriately explained. The suffixes *‑to- and *‑mo- must have originated in the ordinals as thematic formations derived from cardinals and then expanded to the superlatives through the ordinal ‘first’ and other semantically related adjectives (‘last’ and polar/spatial adjectives). Those words provide the semantic and combinatory links between ordinals and superlatives that account for the shared morphology, as the textual evidence also proves. The use of *‑to- and *‑mo- in all those words across the Indo-European languages shows a systematic correlation. The suffixes *‑is-to- and *‑is- ̊mo- are a nice example of transparent nesting, since both include the zero-grade of the comparative suffix. They must have started as relative superlatives, given that ‘first’, ‘last’ and the other related words cannot be absolute superlatives. This is in accordance with a general tendency of evolution of the expressions of the superlative degree. |
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