Thoughts On Indo–European Compounds – Inspired By A Look At Armenian

Abstract

The article presents a descriptive and historical survey of the types of nominal compounds in Classical Armenian, and a number of potential archaisms are discussed: compositional i–stems, laryngeal loss, adjectives with two endings, particular compositional suffixes etc. In a concluding section it is claimed that beside the ‘co–compounds’, consisting of simple juxtapositions, the Indo–European proto–language only had one basic type, the exocentric or possessive compounds with accent on the first member, of which the traditional possessives (bahuvrihis)and the verbal governing compounds are secondary specializations.