--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> Rob talking about something unrelated to my ensuing
> flash of inspiration:
> > The so-called tudáti-type is then, in origin,
> > nothing more than the subjunctive of a root
> > durative.
>
> Oooh, wait a darnpickin' minute :) I see what the
> idea is! It's the accent! That's what disambiguates
> the two cases, yes? So *bHer-e-ti, having initial
> accent, is assumed to be from a subjunctivized
> Narten because the length supposedly steals accent
> away from the thematic vowel. And so, whenever the
> thematic vowel is accented however, it is assumed to
> be a subjunctivized _aorist_ which retains original
> accent on the subjunctive morpheme. ??
I've made a connection between two things. First, IE seems to have
had a very weak pitch-accent in the stage(s) immediately preceding
its breakup. Second, Piotr states that "simple thematic" verbs are
rare in Tocharian and Anatolian. Given that Tocharian and Anatolian
are supposed to have broken off from IE early on, it seems to me that
the "simple thematic" conjugation was the latest addition to IE's
verbal repertoire. What this means is that the "simple thematic"
conjugation was developed in the weak pitch-accent environment.
Thus, it would be expected to seemingly violate the earlier rules of
IE accentuation -- namely, the processes that gave rise to
quantitative and qualitative Ablaut.
At the time when the subjunctive was first formed, a root like *bher-
(in my opinion, earlier *bar-) would become *bher-é- > *bhre- with
the subjunctive suffix. As late IE appears to have undergone much
paradigmatic levelling, this subjunctive form could very well have
been replaced with a late form *bher-é- > *bheré-. Its use as an
indicative verb would place it (canonically) in sentence-final
position, resulting in a loss of accent: *bhere-.
- Rob