A note on the pronominal origin of the Indo-European first person singular verbal desinence

Abstract

Although it is widely assumed that the athematic verbal suffixes of Indo-European derive etymologically from affixed personal pronouns, the problem has remained to explain why the first person singular secondary ending *-m appears to have as its etymon the oblique stem of the corresponding pronoun, not the nominative form in *eg(h)om. However, in light of current views of the process of grammaticalization, it is plausible to assert that *eg(h)om does indeed underlie the desinence*-m.