Re: [tied] Re: Thematic root aorist

On 2006-07-22 15:22, tgpedersen wrote:

> That makes no sense to me. How does one eliminate a whole class of
> verbs in a language?

Not a _class_ of verbs -- the subjunctive was a grammatical category. I
suppose if *bHéreti-type presents had functioned as presents in
Proto-Anatolian, they would have survived. Some of them may have _root_
cognates in Anatolian, but they have no _stem_ cognates, nor do they
correspond systematically to any other Anatolian type of verb stem.

> 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.

Actually, Hittite has several _types_ of thematic present. They include
*-jé/ó- presents, *-éje/o- causatives, *-sk^é/ó- iteratives, oxytone
presents in *-é/ó-, and traces of reduplicated thematic presents; it's
just the "simple" barytone type that's missing.

Piotr