[tied] Re: PIE Word Formation (1)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> 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?

>

Sturtevant's solution is that "A's B" was once
N X-ós Y-&s
A X-ós Y-&m
D X-ós Y-&y
etc
and was changed to "A-like B"
N X-ós Y-&s
A X-óm Y-&m
D X-éy Y-&y
etc

where "A-like" is supposed to represent an adjective, Thus was born
the thematic inflection.

BTW I suspect the thematic inflection became the "open" one, in the
sense that foreign words were assigned to it. That would explain why
*ekW-o-, *taur-o- and *wlkW-ó- (?) are thematic.



Torsten