On Sun, 20 May 2001 20:12:35 +0100, "Dan Jones" <
feuchard@2crfm.net>
wrote:
>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?
It's arbitrary. There is a usually closed and diminishing-over-time
group of IE verbs that follow the athematic paradigm. If there is a
pattern to be discovered in the distribution, that would be very
exciting.
Myself, I have suggested that the thematic vowel (both in the verb and
in the noun/adjective) was originally the pronoun *h1e-, giving
definite adjectives -> nouns (= substantivized adjectives) in nominal
morphology, and expressing a definite third person object in verbal
morphology (as well as giving subjunctives, maybe from former verbal
[o-stem] adjectives). But I haven't found any evidence for this in
the distribution of thematic/athematic forms in the verb (in truth, I
haven't had the time to look into this yet, but I'm not hopeful): the
closed category of athematics contains both transitive and
intransitive verbs.
>Also, how were the subjunctive and optative moods used in PIE, and what were their forms.
The subjunctive of athematic verbs was formally identical to the
indicative of the thematic verbs (endings *-o:, *-e-s[i], *-e-t[i];
*-o-me[C], *-e-te[C], *-o-nt[i]), with the "present tense" marker *-i
being more or less optional.
The subjunctive of thematic verbs must then show a "long thematic
vowel" (*-o:- or *-e:- < **-o-o- and **-e-e), which is what we find in
Greek and Sanskrit.
Outside Greek and Sanskrit, the subjunctive was either lost (e.g. in
Slavic), replaced by the optative (e.g. in Germanic) or acquired
different markers (e.g. the Latin /a:/-subjunctive). Latin does
however preserve a trace of the old subjunctive in the future tense of
the verb "to be" (ero:, eris, erit, erimus, eritis, erunt < *es-o:,
*es-e-s, *es-e-t[i], *es-o-mos, *es-e-tes, *es-ont[i]), showing the
antiquity of at least the "thematic" athematic subjunctive.
The optative mood was characterized by the morph *-y(e)h1- between
verbal root (+ thematic vowel, if any) and the personal endings:
athematic: *-yéh1-m, *-yéh1-s, *-yéh1-t, *-ih1-mé, *-ih1-té, *-ih1-ér
thematic: *-o-ih1-m, *-o-ih1-s, *-o-ih1-t, *-o-ih1-me, *-o-ih1-te,
*-o-ih1-r
[later: *-ye:m, *-ye:s, *-ye:t, *-i:me, *-i:te, *-i:nt;
*-oim, *-ois, *-oit, *-oime, *-oite, *-oint]
The optative (preserved in Sanskrit and Greek) survives in Latin as
the subjunctive of the verb "to be" (sim, si:s, sit, si:mus, si:tis,
sint), in Slavic as the imperative, and in Germanic as the
subjunctive. In Tocharian (and possibly Armenian), it developed into
the imperfect (past) tense.
There is no trace of either subjunctive or optative in the Anatolian
languages, which has led some to conclude that both moods were not
present in the oldest stages of PIE. Other Indo-Europeanists maintain
that the categories were simply lost in Anatolian. My own proposal is
that at least the optative may be present in the Hittite first person
imperative form <eslit> "I want to be/may I be" (outside the verb "to
be" the ending is usually -(a)llut), but that requires a (pre-)PIE
reconstruction *-l^et, developing into *-yeh1(-) by the working of the
soundlaws *l^ [palatalized /l/] > *y (as in **l^e:kwr > *ye:kwr
"liver") and *-t [in Auslaut] > *-h1 (as in the instr.sg. Hitt -et vs.
(non-Anat.)PIE *-eh1).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...