Indo-European Branches for I and II p. Plural, Pronouns

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Proto-IE or Sprachbund? Dialogue with Josef G. Mitterer · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Indo-European Branches for I and II p. Plural, Pronouns · back to Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: An Anti-Christian Bumped in On My Dialogue with Mitterer, Starting with a Red Flag · Continuing with Mitterer · More Mitterer · Mitterer isn't tired, nor am I

I suggested to Josef G. Mitterer that a hypothetic Sprachbund involving Swedish, English and Italian would:

• eliminate all forms in V- (I Eng/Sw, II Ital)
• eliminate all forms in N- (I Ital, II Sw)
• repurpose the remaining forms for I plural, all of them object forms, so that the Italian object form became subject form.

It is a conundrum in Indo-European linguistics why for I p. plural and II p. plural we find so diverse forms, and especially why Germanic languages seem to have W- / V- forms for I p. plural, while Romance and Slavic have them for II p. plural. It is obviously less of a conundrum why Swedish on top of that has an N form for II p. plural, since it's derived from the normal Germanic Y- / J- form. I = ye = ihr. Viljen I > vilje Ni > vilja (pl) / vill (sg polite) Ni.

Josef G. Mitterer observed that no Sprachbund is known to have been harmonising pronouns the way I suggested in my hypothetic example. So, let's look at the real case of the "branches" of Indo-European. I am now going to group them from South-East to North-West, starting with Romance / Slavic. Then Albanian and Greek. Then Lithuanian. Then Germanic apart from Swedish, then Swedish. For Greek, I am going with a very old form. Homeric or Doric, from memory. The endings -es can also be -eis.

Obviously, we can leave Irish out of it. Sinn, sibh, siad seems to be a series which is very independent of the rest. Perhaps it has a connection with Romance / Slavic after the initial si-, but the initial si- sets the system so much apart from the rest, that confusion with the other pronouns is not possible. Welsh seems partly connected to Romance, ni chi nhw.

	I pl subj	I pl obj	II pl subj	II pl obj
Lat	nos	nos	vos	vos
Pol	my	nas	wy	was
Greek	ammes	ammes	ummes	ummes
Alb	ne	na	ju	ju
Lith	mes	mus	jūs	jus
Engl	we	us	ye	you
Swed	vi	oss	ni	er

So, Germanic, the only language group that has W- / V- in I p. pl. is originally separated from Latin by sth like Welsh or Greek or Albanian, and from Slavic by sth like Lithuanian.

Every early neighbourhood of more than one language group counted as "branch" of Indo-European avoids direct conflict. I take it as given the Germanic peoples were 2000 years ago separated from Italic peoples by Celts, Ligurians, Rhaetians and Etruscans. Even much later, Germanic peoples are still prior to AD 1000 often separated from Slavs by Baltic or Finnic peoples.

Indo-Europeanists who believe in the PIE thesis obviously have their (sometimes rather roundabout) theories of how "we" and "uns" and "nos" come from the same PIE etymon. And how vos and you did so. But it is easier to assume that we deal with only partially harmonised Sprachbünder, each case of two neighbouring groups avoiding to have "pronouns in conflict" like we find between Swedish and French.

If we take a look at the possessives of Swedish "vi" and Latin "vos" one could imagine a risk of conflict in neighbouring areas between "vester" and "vår" but ... English and High German, from very early stages, avoid the conflict by dropping the V- before an initial U-.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre
Pancake Tuesday
13.II.2024