Abstract The goal of this paper is to provide some insights into the degree morphology of the ancient IE languages, specifically the superlative suffixes *‑is-toand *‑is- ̊mo-, which have a wider dialectal distribution and could go back to PIE. The relationship of those superlative suffixes to ordinal suffixes is known, but its nature has not been appropriately explained. The suffixes *‑to- and *‑mo- must have originated in the ordinals as thematic formations derived from cardinals and then expanded to the superlatives through the ordinal ‘first’ and other semantically related adjectives (‘last’ and polar/spatial adjectives). Those words provide the semantic and combinatory links between ordinals and superlatives that account for the shared morphology, as the textual evidence also proves. The use of *‑to- and *‑mo- in all those words across the Indo-European languages shows a systematic correlation. The suffixes *‑is-to- and *‑is- ̊mo- are a nice example of transparent nesting, since both include the zero-grade of the comparative suffix. They must have started as relative superlatives, given that ‘first’, ‘last’ and the other related words cannot be absolute superlatives. This is in accordance with a general tendency of evolution of the expressions of the superlative degree.

中文翻译：

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关于印欧语最高级后缀

摘要 本文的目的是对古代 IE 语言的程度形态提供一些见解，特别是最高级后缀 *-is-to 和 *-is- ̊mo-，它们具有更广泛的方言分布，可以追溯到 PIE。这些最高级后缀与序数后缀的关系是已知的，但其性质尚未得到适当解释。后缀 *-to- 和 *-mo- 一定起源于序数词，作为从基数派生的主题结构，然后通过序数词“first”和其他语义相关的形容词（“last”和极性/空间形容词）扩展到最高级. 这些词提供了解释共享形态的序数词和最高级之间的语义和组合联系，文本证据也证明了这一点。*-to- 和 *-mo- 在印欧语言中的所有这些词中的使用显示出系统相关性。后缀 *‑is-to- 和 *‑is- ̊mo- 是透明嵌套的一个很好的例子，因为两者都包含比较后缀的零级。考虑到“first”、“last”和其他相关词不能是绝对最高级，因此它们一定是作为相对最高级开始的。这符合最高级表达的一般演变趋势。