The origin of the ie endingless locative

Abstract

In this paper is presented a new hypothesis regarding the development of the so-called "endingless locative" construction of Indo-European. It is argued that locative formations in -ē, and * ī came to appear in the , o-stem nouns through the monophthongization of word-final *-oi and *-ei before word-initial consonants. These formations were analogically extended to the other stem-classes, with the suffix*-ē, frequently hypercharacterized by the locative particles *-i or *-u, becoming the primary marker of the locative function in the i- and u-stems. On the basis of such apparently "endingless" locative constructions, old consonant-stem nominative (-accusative) formations in were reinterpreted as locatives as well.