Page "Indo-Uralic languages" Paragraph 26

The most common arguments in favour of a relationship between Indo-European and Uralic are based on seemingly common elements of morphology, such as the pronominal roots (* m-for first person ; * t-for second person ; * i-for third person ), case markings ( accusative *- m ; ablative / partitive *- ta ), interrogative / relative pronouns (* kʷ-' who ?, which?

'; * y-' who, which ' to signal relative clauses ) and a common SOV word order.

Other, less obvious correspondences are suggested, such as the Indo-European plural marker *- es ( or *- s in the accusative plural *) and its Uralic counterpart *- t. This same word-final assibilation of *- t to *- s may also be present in Indo-European second-person singular *- s in comparison with Uralic second-person singular *- t. Compare, within Indo-European itself, *- s second-person singular injunctive, *- si second-person singular present indicative, *- tHa second-person singular perfect, *- te second-person plural present indicative, * tu ' you ' ( singular ) nominative, * tei ' to you ' ( singular ) enclitic pronoun.

These forms suggest that the underlying second-person marker in Indo-European may be * t and that the * u found in forms such as * tu was originally an affixal particle.