Re: IE thematic wovels

On Fri, 23 Nov 2001 23:02:55, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>Unfortunately, his views don't make much sense because there is
>no reason for a 3ps pronoun to be attached to the verb unless this
>was a way of marking transitivity. (The 3ps pronoun would function
>as an object marker in this case.) There is nothing wrong with this
>idea but, as I've stated, the original function of the *[-m, -s]
>set of endings was _already_ marking transitivity during the
>IndoTyrrhenian stage, and this assertion is backed up by its
>correlation with the special objective conjugation seen in Uralic
>and Yukaghir.

In Uralic, -m and -t/-n are generally the 1 & 2 person subject markers
both in the subjective and objective conjugations.

>Since there is no such thing as an intransitive **bher-t without
>a supposedly transitive marker **-e- to prove Miguel's case,
>I'm not sure how he can logically justify this view.

*bher-t is exactly Latin <fert>.

>>>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).
>
>Again, it would be nice to see any sort of hint at an original
>opposition between "definite" adjectives versus "indefinite" ones
>in IndoEuropean. Instead, there is no such opposition anywhere
>within the corpus of IE studies.

Opposition between definite and indefinite adjectives is a regular
feature of at least Slavic, Germanic and Tocharian.


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