Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Proto-Indo-European/reply (40)

I doubt it, but I am not an Indo-European linguist so I can't really say more. I do know that a form like *stó would not have lost its s-, and so it really just shifts the problem rather than solve it: if those two forms had *s- why didn't the other forms, and if all of them had *s- why did those two forms keep it while the others lost it? I think the more likely explanation is suppletion, which isn't an uncommon thing with pronouns. The modern Slavic pronouns for example have exactly the same kind of suppletion, with derivatives of in the nominative but descendants of  in all the other cases. This suppletion didn't exist in early Proto-Slavic but developed during the late Common Slavic period, and is still attested in an incomplete way in OCS, so we know it was an innovation and not an archaism. And presumably if this could happen in Slavic 1500 years ago, it could happen to PIE 5000 years ago too.