Miguel:
>The thematic vowel _itself_ does of course behave most peculiarly
>with regards to the zero grade rule.
Of course it does. The development of the thematic vowel started
only in the Late IE stage. It stems from *& as I've said,
lengthening before voiced segments. This qualitative ablaut
therefore is different in origin and more recent than that
underlying perfect and stative verb forms. It also POSTDATES
the loss of unstressed vowels that caused quantitative ablaut
in Mid IE, so it does not operate under quantitative ablaut.
naturally then, we find thematic vowels "behaving most peculiarly"
because they conform only to more recent rules of syllabics and
accent. In Mid IE and the earliest Late IE, unstressed vowels
could only be schwa. When the thematic vowel shift happened
in mid Late IE, full vowels (*e, *o, *a) were now allowed to be
unstressed.
- gLeN
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