Language scratchpad/Altlangs/Alternate reconstructions/Proto-Indo-European scratchpad

This is just a compilation of some of the theories I have about Proto-Indo-European. They may not be accepted, correct, or even consistent.

One of my main sources is Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (https://independent.academia.edu/MiguelCarrasquerVidal), whose internal reconstructions of pre-PIE have interested me. However, he is a Nostraticist (i.e. a supporter of the Nostratic macrofamily comprising, among others, Indo-European, and not a generally accepted position), so a bit of scepticism is ideal (my own opinion on Nostratic is that it is plausible but unprovable, since reconstructing such a large and long-lasting family is beyond the limits of historical linguistics; at that time span there is a high signal-to-noise ratio).

Disclaimer: The entirety of this article's contents is to be considered science fiction. They are not, in any way, verified and accepted reconstructions of real-life proto-languages, even if they are largely based on accepted reconstructions.

Nominals
In general, I confidently reconstruct eight cases, and tentatively a ninth.

Case endings
In general, I reconstruct the athematic endings as follows:

The instrumental *-d is attested in the Anatolian languages (e.g. Hittite -at/-it); in all other attested languages, it has morphed into *-h₁ (e.g. Vedic Sanskrit -ā). The allative is only attested directly in the Anatolian languages (e.g. Hittite -a, -aḫ-), but is found in fossilisations in other languages, reflecting post-PIE *-ā or *-ō.

The above case endings preserve elements of an earlier agglutinative system. The *-bʰi- in the oblique plural forms is most likely an adverb that attached to the nominal, and there is suggestion from the Anatolian languages that there were two genitives *-os and *-om, the former becoming the singular and the latter becoming the plural in post-PIE. The dual, as is known in Indo-European historical linguistics, is an enigma, and I won't elaborate any further here.

While the ablative singular has syncretised with the genitive singular, it is possible that it was originally *-d (compare the thematic and pronominal declension), identical to the instrumental singular.

As such, I posit the following case system for pre-PIE:

I won't go into details on what I think is the morphosyntactic alignment of pre-PIE, but it's likely that whatever it had became the two-gender system found in early PIE, with neuters not distinguishing between the nominative, vocative and accusative. The general plural marker is **-sʷ, while the dual is **-xʷ.

Vidal posits, for early pre-PIE, a simple three-case distinction (zero, **-u, and **-i/**-a for the absolutive, nominative-ergative and accusative-oblique respectively). These endings were utterly lost in late pre-PIE, so additional pronominal elements of the appropriate case were added (**-t-u for the nominative, **-mw-a → -**mʷa for the accusative). These, of course, evolve into the familiar *-s and *-m endings of PIE (the former via **-tʷ → *-sʷ; the **-ts(ʷ) I posit is a possible intermediate). On the other hand, the original early pre-PIE system is partially preserved in the personal pronouns and the verbal system:

As such, the case endings would have developed as follows:

Thematic stems
Vidal (2014) suggests that thematic stems are a conflation of three different ways of forming fully inflected nominals. In general, the theme vowel, which he reconstructs as **-ā, is added to the root, and standard endings follow. However, it is instead possible that pronominal endings are added, either to the theme vowel, or directly to the root. Here are the combinations he has given (albeit modified):

The allative singular, if it existed, likely developed in the same way as the instrumental singular, except with the change **-g → *-h₂.

Interestingly, from looking at the above table, I can reconcile the differences between nominals and verbs with regards to the form of the thematic vowel. Verbs have */o/ before voiced consonants and */e/ word-finally and before voiceless consonants, but nouns have */o/ everywhere except the neuter plural (*-eh₂) and the vocative (*-e), even where */e/ would be expected due to being followed by a voiceless consonant. My observation is that the singular oblique endings, the dual endings and the nominative and genitive plural endings all began with a vowel, and this fulfils the "voiced" requirement for the thematic vowel to become */o/. The phoneme **/xʷ/ (→ *-h₃) is also considered voiced, and thus induces the formation of */o/.

Cardinal numbers
Here is my reconstruction of the cardinals:

Agreement endings
Vidal (2015) gives a description of the possible origin of the person and number endings. In general, they are split into active, stative and middle endings.

Active
In general, the singular and the third person plural forms are easy to reconstruct:

Vidal is, so far, the only linguist I know who explains the post-PIE thematic first person singular form *-ō without reference to a laryngeal. Traditionally, this is reconstructed as *-oh₂, with the typical explanation being that the laryngeal was imported from the stative set (*-h₂e). However, Vidal suggests that a preform **-ā-mu (where **ā is the theme vowel) became **-ā-mʷ, and with the addition of the hic-et-nunc particle *-i, **-ā-mʷ-i. This would then become **-āwi → *-owi → *-owu, which becomes *-ōw in Pre-Tocharian and *-ō in the other branches.

With regards to the third person plural, Vidal suggests that there would also be an ending *-(é)s ← **-(é)sʷ ← **-át-u, but it has been utterly lost in the verbal paradigm. Other alternate endings are listed below: The other forms pose problems. Here I will list expected forms:

Hittite preserves the first set, in the process merging the dual and plural (1p: -wen(i), 2p: -ten(i), 3p: -anzi). The non-Anatolian, non-Tocharian languages, on the other hand, use the second set for the first and second person (e.g. Vedic Sanskrit -masi, -mas, Ancient Greek -te), which does distiniguish between the dual and plural, and the third person dual endings are imported from the middle set (no ending **-íh₃t is attested anywhere).

Stative
Here are the stative endings:

Hittite and Tocharian seem to show a second person plural form *-s- (Hittite -steni, Tocharian -s).

Middle
The middle, according to Vidal, is even more complex. In general, the middle endings begin and end with the following:

He then gives a table showing the pre-PIE middle conjugation, assuming the endings (which become divergent tense markers in the daughter languages) denote the indirect object: