Re: Summary of Athematic and a possible "Verner's Law" of Athematics

----- Original Message -----

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, March 27, 2000 11:20 AM

Subject: [cybalist] Summary of Athematic and a possible "Verner's Law" of Athematics

More for poor, tired Piotr to digest...

Thanks for your concern.

- accented thematics are not reconstructable for earlier stages
      of IE. Verbs with ablaut and alternation of accent between
      singular and plural can only be the most ancient since the
      motivation for this phenomenon cannot be explained from the
      perspective of common IE nor its later dialects. Accented
      thematics are much more simplified in comparison, as we should
      expect from newer forms

I'm glad you say that. I can fully agree with THIS paragraph. So the *bhére-ti/*bhéro-nti type is an innovation (spreading in Late PIE or even non-Anatolian IE times), while the *(H)éd-ti/*(H)d-ónti or *gWHén-ti/*gWHn-ónti type "can only be the most ancient". Good. I've been saying something like this all along, so why the heck do you insist on treating the latter type as something imported from Semitic? BTW in Anatolian typical "thematics" presents are DERIVED forms in -ske- and -ija-, while "athematics" are partly good old root stems like kwen-tsi 'slay', wek-tsi 'wish' (= Skt. vaś-ti), es-tsi 'is', neku-tsi 'gets dark', etc., partly derived verbs in -nin-, -ah-, -es-, etc. It seems to me as if it were (some classes of) thematics, rather than athematics, that may owe their origin to the reanalysis of derived stems.

 

BTW: you don't analyse non-present forms at all, but asigmatic aorists have always played an important role in discussions of the origin of IE thematics and deserve at least to be mentioned en passant.

    - athematic verbs are caused not only by Semitic loanwords but
      by derivation, whether by modal affixes or via athematic nouns
    - verbs derived from modal affixes are part of the athematic
      class because of an Old IE change that altered *CVCVC-
      stems to CVCC-. The change is dated before Semitic influence
      since loans like IE *nebhes- (Akkadian napis^tu "soul") are
      unaffected.

Apart from the delicate question of *nebhes- being a loan, the type it represents is a regularised version of an older MOBILE paradigm, visible in certain archaic-looking CVC-s- neuters (e.g. some names of body parts) without the characteristic full vocalism of *nebhes-. Transparently deverbal nouns like *genh-es- or *klew-es- must be rather late; they flourished in non-Anatolian IE and abound in most of the branches. It's precisely their regular structure (a verb root in the e-grade + -es-) that made them popular.

         Examples:
                   OIE *merec-/*merece "remember/(he) remembers"
                   MIE *merc-/*merc(e)
                   IE  *mers-/*mers-t,*mers-ti

                   OIE *hWegWec/*hWegWet:em "eye (nom/acc)"
                   MIE *hWegW(e)c/*hWegWtem
                   IE  *hWekWt-s/*hWekWtm

                   OIE *kerec/keret:em "heart (nom/acc)"
                   MIE *ker(e)c/*kert:em
                   IE  *kert-s/*kerdm

You often use non-existent forms, even in your examples. "IE *hWekWt-" is one of them; the final -t- is something that got in your eye by mistake (a misanalysis of Greek opt-?). Secondly, both 'eye' and 'heart' were neuters and had no -s in the Nom. sg. or -m in the Acc. sg. Both case forms were the same (namely, inflectionless) for them. There are known derivatives in -(e)s- ot the 'eye' word, but there we deal with a stem-forming element (as in *klew-os/*klew-es-), and not a nominative ending. If you aren't careful, a glance at a table like this will make any IEst reject it out of hand.

 

Piotr