Re: [tied] Re: PIE Word Formation (1)

On 2006-04-03 16:34, Rob wrote:

> Regrettably, this point is where my disagreement begins. To begin
> with, I consider the term "thematic" to be misleading here. From the
> evidence I've seen, it does not appear that the "thematic vowel" had
> its origin as such. Rather, I trace its origin to the (animate)
> genitive ending, *-ós.

Was it any different from the inanimate genitive? And how and why was
the vowel of the genitive ending reanalysed as a stem-final element?

> Furthermore, while *o does indeed appear to be
> a conditioned variant of *e (or, more accurately, they are both
> conditioned variants of a single earlier vowel, which I mark as *a),
> the overwhelming pattern is *e when stressed and *o (or zero) when
> unstressed. Thus, any instance of unstressed *e or stressed *o would
> seem to need some other explanation. As a result, it does not follow
> to me that the vocative ending *-e (and perhaps also the instrumental
> ending *-eh) is a conditioned variant of the "thematic vowel"
> (otherwise *o).

This looks to me like an artificial difficulty. The rule determining the
quality of the thematic vowel has been partly obscured by analogical
levellings, but there are sufficient traces of the original state of
affairs, especially in the verb system: *-o-m, *-o-mes, *-o-nt but
*-e-s, *-e-t, *-e-te and *-e (in the imperative).


Piotr