Re: [tied] Re: PIE i- and u-stems again

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 47531
Date: 2007-02-19

On 2007-02-19 01:00, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> There is no shift to *-o- in substantives, as the *-o- is
> well-attested in the pronominal forms themselves. *kWeh1 and
> *kWesyo have /e/ because these forms simply do not contain a
> thematic vowel: they come from *kWis, n. *kWid, f. *kWih2.

There seems to be a fundamental difference between our views on the
status of the *-i- forms (often found alongside *-e/o- forms in a
suppletive relationship to them). I like Jens's theory about the *i
resulting from the phonetic reduction of the thematic vowel in clitic
pronouns (as in some other departments of PIE morphophonology). Why
should forms like *kWesjo, *kWeh1 be more closely related to "athematic"
*kWis rather than "thematic" *kWos? It's obvious that the analogical
spread of *-o- could take place even in pronominal declensions (let
alone nouns and adjectives): what are oblique stems like m./n. *to-sm-
if not regularised counterparts of *te-sm- (cf. f. *te-s[m]-jah2-)?

> It suggests to me that the deadjectival verbs are built upon
> the athematic root of the adjective, which would compromise
> the link with the "cato-group".

The way I'd reconstruct them, we have, first, the "athematic" variant
with an aorist in *-éh1-/*-h1- (I know Jens has elaborated on this
recently, but this approximate reconstruction will do for the present
discussion) and a derived present in *-h1-jé/ó- (the *h1 will usually be
rendered invisible by Pinault's Law). Secondly, we have the "thematic"
variant with an aorist in *-e-h1- (where the *-e- never disappears) and
a present in *-e-h1-je/o-. I'd also predisct the existence of a minor
subtype in *-i-h1-je/o- depending on the original location of accent,
but analogy might have blurred the distinction early. What presisely is
wrong with this fully transparent scheme, and why is it so inadequete
for Balto-Slavic? I find your proposal strange even if it seems to work
phonologically for BSl., since I can't make any sense of a stem which is
underlyingly //-eh1-j-//, and which is BOTH present and aorist.

Piotr