On Sat, 24 Nov 2001 02:02:25, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>>Opposition between definite and indefinite adjectives is a regular
>>feature of at least Slavic, Germanic and Tocharian.
>
>Meaningless. There are many languages with that feature. Your
>point was? It doesn't prove your theory about IE thematic stems.
>ProtoGermanic does not in anyway have definite/indefinite adjectives
>with *-e/o-. And if Tocharian and Slavic do, then one can only
>imagine why a hundred-and-one competent IndoEuropeanologists haven't
>yet reconstructed it for IndoEuropean yet.

Of course the definite adjectives in Germanic and Tocharian (n-stems)
and Baltic and Slavic (postfixed pronominal element *-(j)is) are
formally distinct from the thematic declension. Neither I nor any
other "IndoEuropeanologist" can reconstruct the thematic declension
for Indo-Eurlopean as a definite declension, because that's not what
it was in PIE (anymore).

But the clues that the thematic vowel, certainly in the noun, is of
pronominal origin are so obvious, that it would be a strange thing
indeed if I had been the first person to think of such a notion. Of
course I'm not. I need only pick up my copy of, say, Szemerényi, look
under thematic stems (7.6), and find references to an article by A.W.
Grundt, where the thematic vowel is described as "a definite
inflectional stem" opposed to an "indeterminate stem" without it, or
to Haudry (thematic vowel is "article défini postposé"). My thoughts
exactly.

Neither are Glen's thoughts original: the same footnote in Szemerényi
mentions García Calvo ("inflected genitives in -os") and perhaps
Beekes ("the nom. in -os, an ergative, is the foundation of the whole
inflection").

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...