Re: [tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their themati

glen gordon wrote:

> Yes. So just to clarify, can someone please explain
> to me how one might determine whether a later thematic
> durative like *bHer-e-ti is from a subjunctivized
> Narten stem (ie: < (pre-)IE durative-aorist *bHe:r-t)
> or a subjunctivized aorist (ie: < *bHer-t). What
> piece of evidence disambiguates the two possible
> cases?

The tenaciousness of the full vocalism of the root syllable. For
example, the *-nt- participle is *bHér-ont- rather than *bHr-ént- (we
have the latter type in *gWn-ént-, *kWr-ént- and *gWHn-ént-, for
example). To be sure, most people reconstruct the participle of the
thematic type as *bHéro-nt-, but the alleged thematic vowel untypically
disappears in the weak cases in Ved. bHáratas < *bHér-n.t-os, so perhaps
one should derive the participle directly from the root verb *bHe:r-.

Piotr