On 2006-07-18 02:17, Sean Whalen wrote:
> Accented e/o remain, other e/o deleted so originally
> thematic verbs look athematic in Hittite.
First, there is no such rule in Hittite (if there were, we would also
have thematic nouns and adjectives looking athematic). Secondly, if
things were that simple, do you think linguists studying Hittite are
foolish enough not to have considered such an obvious possibility? The
real problem is that there are no stem cognates of extra-Anatolian
simple thematic presents (and the subjunctive is lacking as a category),
while _other_ types of thematic presents with exact stem cognates widely
attested in other IE languages do exist, cf. causatives like
wassezzi/wassanzi 'clothe' < *wos-éje-ti/*wos-éjo-nti (with the thematic
vowel unaccented but preserved), or the entire -ske-zzi/-ska-nzi class.
If there were any truth in what you are saying, we would expect numerous
Hittite verbs looking like acrostatic root stems but otherwise related
to familiar simple thematics like *bHer-e/o-, *h2ag^-e/o-, *weg^H-e/o-,
*h3reg^-e/o-, etc. There are none.
Piotr