Re: [tied] thematic/athematic, subjunctive & optative

Dear Dan,

I have already organised the whole series into a single HTML document and put in in the list's Files area. It includes information about the PIE moods and voices, their endings and the way they were used.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/PIE Morphology/Verbs.html

Whether the verb is thematic or athematic does not depend on the shape of the root, but in the case of verb stems formed with derivational suffixes we can usually predict the conjugation type. For example, verb stems in *-j- or *-sk^- are always thematic (*-j-e-, *-sk^-e-), while those in *-n(e)u- are athematic. Some stem types, e.g. reduplicated presents, vary between thematic and athematic.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Jones

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2001 9:12 PM

Subject: [tied] thematic/athematic, subjunctive & optative

I have been following Piotr's series about PIE verbs, it's absolutely fascinating. However, I have one question:

How do we decide whethter a verb follows the thematic or athematic paradigm? Is it in some way related to the root?

Also, how were the subjunctive and optative moods used in PIE, and what were their forms. Tell me if I'm getting ahead of you and it'll be covered in the next post. Also, the mediopassive endings would be nice...