Re: Semantic differentiation between thematic and athematic?

> It is a strange fact that the manifestly secondary tudáti type is
> present in Hittite (suwe-zzi 'pushes' = Ved. suvá-ti 'pushes'),
> while the much better secured type of bhárati, ájati etc. is not
> found at all. The truly odd thing is that the very roots that form
> the "pure thematic type" *bhér-e-ti do not inflect by any other

type

> in Hittite either, but are simply not present. I can see only one
> explanation for this surprising fact, namely the one that was
> occasionally expressed by Jochem Schindler in a joking mood: they
> were abolished. Indeed, if the Anatolian branch abolished the IE
> subjunctive, speakers may well have gone to the extreme of
> stigmatizing the very structure *CéC-e- as a verbal stem, an
> attitude that made some of the basic verbs of IE useless and in

need

> of replacement by synonyms. Thus, the lack of a subjunctive in
> Anatolian may well be connected with the lack of some very basic
> verbal lexemes, and this may well indicate that the pure thematic
> type *is* in reality just an old subjunctive.
>

I can see another explanation (but I'm known to be incapable of
seeing any other than that): the thematic class is the the 'open'
class and those stems are loans in non-Hittite IE. I could certainly
argue non-IE origin for *ag^- and *bher-.


Torsten