--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:
> There is nothing in Jens' rule that requires it to take
> place in one stage. It might as well be the result of the
> application of two rules at different stages.
I guess that is correct. But it is hard to see that your sceneario
offers any advantages. You are in effect saying that, by the
splitting-up of PIE, the thematic vowel -o- did not yet exist. It
was only so many later and independent events of normalization,
implemented by generalization of the vowel in stem-final position
that caused the vowel to appear in the forms where we know it as -e-
.
If this is a fair report of your position (which I am not sure for
it changes all the time), there are some grave problems here
already:
1. Are the e-forms also secondary in the categories in which the
thematic vowel is accented? It certainly is in verbs in *-sk^é-ti
and in denominatives in *-yé-ti. If so what were the forms like
before the -e- was introduced?
2. Why would there not have been a thematic vowel in the forms - and
only in those forms - where the following desinential segment was
voiceless? Why was there such a correlation? To my pleasant surprise
the rule has been widely accepted on the list, but I have also seen
it being used as fuel for further analyses that make me regret I
ever told about it.
3. The e/o rule also applies outside of the verb. Was there no vowel
in the vocative of o-stems in IE? Is the *-e of Lat. domine, Gk.
ánthro:pe, Lith. vy´re, OSC boz^e, and Sanskrit déva a post-PIE
addition? And what about the *-e- > *-a- of the feminine and the
collective which is not *-o-? Is that a later addition/insertion?
And if acc. *tó-m, *tó-d are fine old thematic forms, what was the
vowel of the genitive *tésyo?
These embarrassing questions seem to me to be of a kind that
completely destroys the idea of a post-PIE origin of thematic *-e-.
Jens