English inflectional endings evolved from separate independent words
the verdict
CONTESTED
contested - evenly split
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
1 source for · 1 against
AS REPORTEDno primary record reached; this is what the reporting says
The sources present differing perspectives, with one noting evidence that Indo-European inflectional endings were preceded by a more analytic stage, while another questions whether they go too far back into PIE to know.
... English , were preceded by synthetic types ; and there is reasonable evi- dence , at least for Indo - European , that the grammatical synthesis as seen in ancient Greek was preceded by a more analytic stage ( inflectional endings having ...
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# Are the inflectional endings in English known to have evolved from separate words or do they go too far back into PIE to know?
Tags: english, historical-linguistics, proto-indo-european, inflection, affixes
- Score: 8
- Views: 429
- Answers: 1
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: hippietrail (15126 rep)
- Asked: 2017-12-04
- Site: linguistics
## Question
English isn't a highly inflected language, but it did evolve from one and still has at least: -s, -es; -ed, -ing; -er, -est; for nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Do we know if these all evolved from separate words, or do they go too far back into PIE to know?
## Answers
### Answer by Mark Beadles (score: 9 [ACCEPTED])
English is generally regarded as having the following 7 inflectional suffixes. All of them have been suffixes since Proto-Indoeuropean, but most have followed a rather circuitous path along the way. This is rough outline:
plural -s:
< AS -as 'masc. a-stem nom.-acc. pl.'
< PGmc -anz 'acc. pl.'
< PIE -(o)ns 'acc. pl.'
third person singular -s:
< AS -st '2nd person sg.' (2sg was leveled with 3sg by analogy with ON)
< PGmc -zi '2nd person sg.'
< PIE -si '2nd person sg.'
past tense/participle -ed:
< AS -ode 'class 2 weak