[tied] Re: sum

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

> Actually the other way around. The -o- came first. The -e- of the
> thematic vowel did not yet exist but was added later, is what I'd
> have to say.

Of course; that's really what I meant; it is also what I respond to
in the following. I just got it backwards in the typing.

> My problem is that since I'm no pro, I don't have enough

information

> on basics and therefore I have to make do with throwing half-baked
> ideas into the air for the pros to shoot down or improve, as the
> case might be.
>
> >
> > 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?
> >
>
> I think I'd have to resort to claiming they were late forms.

"They" meaning all these categories? Note that they exist in all the
IE we know.

> > 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 would there have been an -e-? I have no answer, but your e/o
> rule similarly has no answer. I don't think I make it less or more
> explainable bt dividing it into two phases.

Why would there have been an *-e-? Because we see it. All branches
reflect it. In my estime you make it absurd by not wanting to have
it in the protolanguage.

> > 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?

>
> I'll need a time-out on that.
>
> > And if acc. *tó-m, *tó-d are fine old thematic forms, what was

the

> > vowel of the genitive *tésyo?
> The genitive must once have been *tes. Or rather *t&s (I believe
> Miguel has a solution of problen of PIE phonology by resurrecting
> full vowels from schwa's)

Then why was it not *tos if the only thematic vowel shape of PIE age
is *-o-? Or fromt he other angle, if you arbitrarily write schwa
insted of the thematic e's, why are the later e'of the thematoc
conjugation not old schwas, i.e. e's??

>
> > These embarrassing questions seem to me to be of a kind that
> > completely destroys the idea of a post-PIE origin of thematic *-

e-.

> >
> Or pre-PIE origin of thematic *-o-.
>
> You may be right.

I can't see there can be any doubt that thematic -e- and thematic -o-
both existed in the protolanguage. Therefore they both have a pre-
PIE origin.

Thematic vowels are stem-final vowels in IE. There are *no* accent-
governed ablauting vowels in that position. Therefore, there is no
chronological problem to solve, because the thematic vowel
alternation only applies to a specific position on the words where
the other rules do not operate. That fact is in itself so far from
being trivial that it cannot possibly have been brought about by
independent innovations in ten IE branches.

Jens