Re: [tied] PIE conjugations

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 5161
Date: 2000-12-23

The details differ somewhat from author to author, but *bHere- is conjugated more or less like the rest of Class II (*bHeroh2(i), *bhereth2ai, *bHerei). I'm not sure about Adams's favourite endings; I'd have to go to my institute library to check that, and that won't happen until early next millennium. But Mark has a copy of his own and if we ask him politely, maybe he'll be good enough to check the details in the article on the "Proto-Indo-European Language" and tell us how Adams conjugates *bHere-. (Would you, Mark?) Anyway it's clear that *bHere-si and *bHere-ti are innovated (they don't occur in some branches in the thematic conjugation), while "*bHero:" is an old form.
 
I agree *-th2a is ugly, but Greek and Sanskrit -tha (*woid-th2a > Gk (w)oistha, Skt wettha) leaves us little choice. If this reconstruction is correct, the ending must be composite *-t-h2a. It's thinkable that *-h2a is ultimately borrowed from the first person and that the original 2sg ending was just *-t, but this is pure speculation. Perhaps *-h2a had other functions apart from being the 1sg ending.
 
Piotr
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2000 10:58 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] PIE conjugations

... Whoa! Stop! You mean *bhere- is supposed to be conjugated as [*bherexai, *bheretxai, *bherei] as well?! Or do you mean that this IIb subclass is conjugated as a "thematic" subclass with the modified *mi-endings like in Class I [*bhero:, *bheresi, *bhereti] just as usual and that IIa is non-thematic, using stative-indicative endings (eg: [*org^hxai, *org^htxai, *org^hei]).

Second, why is this weird cluster *-tx- insisted upon in the 2ps? It hurts my eyes. I know Sanskrit with its /-th-/ must have something to do with this. What else?