> This still doesn't explain why the supposedly dominant type doesn't
> occur in Anatolian at all. For the moment at least I prefer Jens's
> explanation: the entire category of "subjunctive" was lost in
Anatolian,
> and since the bHárati-stems were still subjunctives at that point
(as
> they are, for the most part, in Tocharian!), they were lost together
> with the whole lot.
That makes no sense to me. How does one eliminate a whole class of
verbs in a language? Do you know of a similar example in another
language of that happening? How would the enormous semantic lacuna
that leaves behind get filled? It seems much more credible that the
thematic verbs were new in the neo-IE languages. Not that many
languages with a complicated verb morphology (not English) use a
suffix that functions as an "adapter" (like your shaver): German
-ier-, Russian -(ir-)ova-/-uj-, which is stressed; was that the role
of the thematic vowel?
Also note that if Miguel is right that the *-je/o- causatives are made
up of a verbal form plus a finite form of a verb *je/o-, then Hittite
_does_ have at least one thematic verb. But in that case, and in the
case of a hypothetical *ske/o- verb, they appeared thematic, because
their stem was just a consonant (cluster)?
Torsten