Knut:

>Does enyone on this board have a view about the origin of IE
>thematic wovels?

I think I'm the only one on this list with views <:)

>In the texts I have read, the general view is that this is a late
>innovation. But I have never seen any good explanation for this
>view.

Really? I wonder why. Perhaps they're speaking of thematic _nouns_?
That, I think, developed from a misanalysis of words formed with
the genitive *-os. I think at one point, many adjectives were
formed with *-os. When they complemented a noun, especially
a noun in the nominative (*-s), it looked as though the adjective
was AGREEING in case with the noun. So... adjectives in *-os were
reanalysed as *-o-s (thematic vowel + nominative). Because of this
adjectives came to be declined with declensional endings originally
reserved for nouns, and hence they began dropping the *-s to form
non-nominative cases. Yes, this appears to be a late phenomenon.
I offer a date of 5000-4500 BCE.

As for thematic verbs, if I understand correctly, thematic roots
were the norm (*bhereti, *g^enheti) while athematic roots were
uncommon (*esti, *etti). My thought is that the conjugational
thematic vowel derives from Steppe only in part. I think that
the 3ps/pl endings were originally without *-t (Mid IE *-�/*-�n�).
The *-t derives from the demonstrative *to-. So, the original 3ps
would appear to have been identical to the bare stem, ending in
*-�. I believe that this derives from the Steppe third person
transitive *-i.

Since the 3ps came to be thought of as the bare stem in some
stage of PreIE (probably MidIE), the vowel was transferred to
other persons by analogy, particularly the 1pp and 2pp endings
where we have *bher-o-mes and *bher-e-tes, for example.

Here are the endings for Steppe (9000 BCE) as far as I suppose:

intransitive transitive
1s *-im *-ux
2s *-it *-un
3s *-i NULL


And for IndoTyrrhenian (7000 BCE):

active stative
1s *-�m *-x-a
2s *-�c *-t-a
3s *-� *-a

(I know, you're probably confused about the stative *-a suffix
which has to do with the shift from intransitive/transitive to
active/stative...)

And for Mid IE (6000-5000 BCE):

1s *-�m *-x�
2s *-�c *-t�
3s *-� *-�

Or so says I...

- love gLeN


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp