Miguel:
> Not always. It can also be the zero grade of *yV, or it can be a
> full grade.
Yes, yes, but I'm only going to mention the general pattern so as to
not drown poor Exu in a confusing rant about ALL possibilities. IE's
*i is analysed as a syllabic consonant just like *m, *n, *r and *l.
That's all. And as for *i being potentially 'full-grade', that's only
possible if you redefine what 'full-grade' means. Afaik, the term
requires the presence of at least *e or *o to be called full-grade.
Miguel:
> In particular, the strong forms of the anaphoric pronoun (*ís, *ím)
> are not the zero grade of anything.
Maybe not in the last stage of IE itself, but *i- must still be the
product of a reduced *ei, and we find a related oblique *e used to refer
to time and space. In fact, most pronouns show zero-grading. That's the
norm it seems. This makes sense considering that they are typically
lacking accent in a sentence and we've seen how accent and zero-grading
are linked.
> OK, then it is two morphemes, or three...
Then it is a cart before a horse. There's nothing to make us think it's
a morpheme from the very beginning. Only the term "thematic vowel" is
the impetus for this pointless journey but the term is based on
observations of IE grammar, not observations of real morphemic segments.
You may certainly invent two, three or a hundred seperate functions for
your fantasy to work. Nothing's stopping you except Occam's Razor but
that hardly seems to stop anybody nowdays.
> The dative *-é, and, at least in Hittite, the allative *-ó.
Since Hittite is not IE, I don't acknowledge what you're talking about.
You have a pesky habit of reinventing IE and making up your own
concoctions. In mainstream IE, we reconstruct *-ei or *-i... Please note
the semivocalic _consonant_. If there should be what appears to be *-e
in Hittite, it's probably because of the application of the locative
*e (*?e) as a suffix or an irregular reduction.
As for allative, there simply is no reconstructable allative for IE
thus far. Don't even bother me with your whims.
= gLeN