Re: [tied] 1sg. -o: [was Re: IE Thematic Vowel Rule]

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 39578
Date: 2005-08-10

elmeras2000 wrote:

> Where did I say that? Latin sequor is not opposed to a passive, IE *-
> o: is the active opposed to a middle which is *-aH2i. Why would *-o:
> then be an old middle-voice form? With the wrong colour of the
> thematic vowel, and without the primary marker?

Just a brief comment (I'll be back in a few days and I'll be happy to
discuss this at length). I used to believe in the *-o-h2 analysis of
1sg. *-o:, but I've lost all my faith in it. As you can guess, the main
reason is that there's simply no credible way of acounting for the
colour of the thematic vowel. The "simplification" of **-o-mi doesn't
work either -- it's just an ad hoc stipulation.

I think there's another possibility worth considering: the conflation of
the thematic indicative with the thematic subjunctive in *-o:, which
could derive from *-o:m < *-e/o-o-m, with early dropping of the final
nasal after a long vowel. Phonetically, this is much more plausible than
any other solution I've seen so far. The replacement of indicative forms
by corresponding subjunctives is not unprecedented in the historically
known languages, cf. OE (dial.) 1sg.pres. -u --> -e (cf. also the
innovated 2sg. of the preterite, e.g. OE bude as opposed to Goth. baust
< *(bHe-)bHoudH-th2a). In the southern dialects of Polish one finds 1sg.
pret. -ech for -em on the analogy of <bych> (an original aorist
converted into a subjunctive in Old Polish).

Piotr