Re: IE thematic wovels

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001 21:18:32 -0000, "Knut" <aquila_grande@...>
wrote:

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

Yes: they are the agglutinated anaphoric pronoun *e/*o.

>With that I mean the ending of the stem in the thematic declination
>o/e declension of nouns, and the wovel between root and ending in
>forms of many verbs (present/imperfect tense, some aorists).

In the nouns, the thematic vowel served to make originally definite
adjectives (later often substantivized). In the verb, the thematic
vowel was originally the marker for a [3rd person] definite direct
object (à la the Hungarian objective conjugation). On the other hand,
the subjunctive (always thematic) was built upon a thematic verbal
adjective.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...