Re: sum

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

> The operative word here is 'bridge', obviously you see the

behavior

> of the thematic vowel and the behavior of Latin 'sum' etc as two
> unrelated phenomena.

Not really: The inherited paradigm of *H1esmi is being adjusted to
that of other inhertited athematics (edo, eo) which have themselves
been adjusted to the semithematic pattern that emerged from allegro
reduction of some high-frequency thematics. Therefore the
predesinential vowels of these verbs *are* the thematic vowel, and
that's why they behave according to its rules.

> If so, it's odd they seem to behave according
> to the same phonological rule. Which is what I was trying to say.
> You stated that the behavior of the thematic vowel was not matched
> by other ablauting vowels. I just pointed out one.

Well, I have explained that as thematic too. I really do not think
there are other vowels that show the allomorphy of the thematic
vowel. The closest thing seems to be the vowel of reduplications.

>
> Further, who would want to press a verb for 'be' into a new and
> complicated mould, such as that of the semi-thematic paradigm?

What

> purpose would be served by that? Schmalstieg, if I understand him
> correctly, thinks the semi-thematic paradigm (*bhro: *bhers *bhert
> *bhromos *bhertis *bhront) was the original one and the thematic

one

> a generalisation of it.

Schmalstieg has said a lot of funny things. Sorry, Piotr, I can't
really find a rhetorical way to disprove this. The thematic type has
*-e/o- in Germanic, Old Irish, Slavic (however, with -e- in the 1du
and 1pl, but not in the aorist), Latin (apart from fers fert
fertis), Albanian, Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Tocharian; Baltic has *-
o- all through, Armenian -e-. Hittite thematic verbs (ye/o and ske/o
verbs and the presumed tudáti-type verbs) have *-e/o- just like the
rest. Nowhere is there a semithematic paradigm of any credible
antiquity.

Jens