Sound laws and the suffix of the PIE "middle" participle.

International audienceDiscussion of the reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European suffix *-mh1no-, which can explain the so-called middle participle of several Indo-European languages, with the exception of Anatolian. This suffix has however an unusual structure, by comparison with the alternative reconstruction *-m(e)no-, related to the well-known action noun suffix *-men-. The paper shows that originally this suffix was not marked for voice, and its eventual specialization for middle is corollary to the specialization of the suffix *-(e/o)nt- for the active participle. The shape of the suffix is explained as from a second compound member, which has been reinterpreted as suffix with possessive value