--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> I think it's interesting that the person and number endings were
> independent words that late. I've never heard that before. But why
> not? Is there other evidence for it?
Well, how late will that be? I don't think we know what we're talking
about here. It may put things into perspective to remember that the
thematic vowel rule is still directly observable in Modern Greek and
in part also in some Slavic languages, and indirectly in the
distribution of umlaut in the Albanian verb. These pieces of evidence
still match each other quite well, so one would think their common
source is of relatively recent date. Now, the source, whatever it was,
is definitely older than the IE protolanguage, so its effects have
been lingering on for at least five millennia. Then the
ultimate "real" source of the thematic vowel rule does not have to be
something created just yesterday either.
Jens