> It's probably a Greek innovation. It's unlikely so many other branches besides Greek would have the same meaning as a shared innovation, rather than a shared retention.
>
Yeah, rethinking about this, I looked for such "tos" endings. Adams & Mallory give for example : "kaptòs" = "prisoner" = "having been caught", which has obviously a perfect meaning.
But, based on Greek and Sanskrit, they give *derk^etò- = "visible"
, from *derk^ = to glimpse, see.
But, if this were really a verbal adjective, I realised we should have gotten : *drk^tòs, i.e. with zero-grade and no thematic vowel.
Then, my idea is that *derk^etòs might be a "subjunctive perfect medio-passive particle", = "which may have been glimpsed" = "glimpsable".
You remember that the mark of the subjunctive mode (whose meaning is more or less like the English modal verb "may") in PIE is the presence in all cases of the thematic vowel : e/o.
As far as I remember (but I could not check them all), most Old Greek verbal adjectives with the meaning "-ble" display a thematic vowel before the final "-tos".
So, what's your opinion ?
Olivier
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/