Miguel:
> The article starts by saying (under SOMMAIRE): "Le génitif
> thématique ancien a été en *-os, homonyme du nominatif".
Good ol' Bader.
> Whether a putative thematic genitive *-os would have been
> originally homonymic with the nominative is doubtful. The
> nominative goes back to *-oz, while the genitive is properly
> *-es, which would give *-o-(e)s > *-os in its thematic form.
Proving this antithetic viewpoint with rhetoric about **-z doesn't
help the point. I've shown how it suffices that "z" is merely
ever an allophone of *s but nobody is able to undermine that
view. Yet it is a superior stance because it doesn't conjecture
new phonemes while still satisfying the sober connection of
thematic *-o- before voiced phonemes. Nothing but gain.
> Homonymy in this scenario would have been late (after *-z >
> *-s and zero-grade), but may indeed have been a motivation to
> modify the them.gen. form, as Bader states.
What else would it be? Potential homonymy is the only immediate
order to the erratic pattern and since the genitive *-as must
necessarily have been pronounced *[-az] at the time of confusion
(ignoring views on transcription of IE as *-os or *-oz), its
confusion with accented thematic nominative *[-a-z] was certainly
a potential problem at an early enough date. My theory predicts
this homonymy and yet my views were based on many other
considerations that have little to do with the thematic genitive.
However, that prediction is just icing on the cake and shows me
that my ideas must largely be correct.
The observation of the declension of thematic adjectives,
nominal derivatives in *-om, and even the subtle difference
between many adjectival stems and their correlating thematic
nominal derivatives that only differ in accent placement further
guarantee that this threat did indeed occur in IE's past.
I'm flabbergasted that some on this Forum are still denying that
the sky is blue and insist that none of this took place when
everything we know of IE shows that it must have.
= gLeN