--- In nostratic@..., Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Oct 2002 14:57:01 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard

Rasmussen

> <jer@...> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, 17 Oct 2002 19:26:47 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard

Rasmussen

> >> <jer@...> wrote:
> >>
> >> >This has all been said before,
> >>
> >> May I ask by whom (except me)?
> >
> >It is conneted with the names Paul Kretschmer (Objektive

Konjugation im

> >Indogermanischen, Wien 1947) and Johann (or, Jean) Knobloch ("La

voyelle

> >-e-/-o- serait-elle un indice d'objet indo-europeïen? Lingua 3,

1953,

> >407-20). It has been occasionally reopened by others, I would

have to do

> >some very serious searching to get that right (wasn't Kronasser

among

> >them?).
>
> And I take it that like me, they came up with essentially no

backing evidence,

> except that it's a neat idea?

No, they appear to have been so worked up about the mere encounter
of such languages that they simply wanted the same to be valid for
IE, not caring a whole lot about the absence of evidence.

> >> It certainly was.  The question is whether all thematic verbs

are old

> >> subjunctives.  Can the tudáti-type be explained as a

subjunctive?  It

> >> doesn't
> >> look like one, accent-wise.
> >
> >
> >That's right, and nobody would claim a subjunctive origin for the

tud ti

>
> I see, new computer... tudáti
>
> >type. There are two views on the particulars which both depart

from the

> >weak forms of an athematic conjugation:
> >
> >EITHER it represents a backformation from ambiguous forms like

Skt. 3pl

> >tud nti, which was reanalyzed from *tud- nti to *tud- -nti.
>
> tudánti *tud-ánti *tud-á-nti, I take it.

Right; I'll have a word with a colleague about the whims of the new
computer. There are letters in our alphabet I cannot write via modem
connection with the Department of Linguistics. I could last week,
but technology keeps making "progress".

> >That has to
> >live with the problem that the two did not rhyme in PIE which had

athem.

> >*-enti vs. them. *-o-nti. Still, that did not keep Latin and

Slavic from

> >forming sunt and soNtU, so it is not a compelling counterargument.
> >
> >OR it is based on the middle voice whise original 3sg form ended

in *-eï.

>
> Sorry, I can't figure out if this is _meant_ to be *-eï or *-é (as

in

> indo-europeïen above).

I meant an accented short e. Working now directly on the Yahoo group
website, I may get it through: *-é (meaning *-e´).

> >With the ppropagation of the person-marking consonants of the

active into

> >the middle, this was quite likely to produce *-e-t and to be

taken as the

> >pivotal form of an inflection with *-o-m, *-e-s etc. to go with

it.

> >
> >I suppose both explanations are true for individual cases. The

whole type

> >is commonly assumed to be an innovation with no deep roots in the

IE

> >verbal system. I side with tradition here.
>
> Well, to be honest, as long as no (direct or indirect) evidence

can be adduced

> for a former transitive/definite function of the thematic

conjugation, the

> concept remains a nice idea but lacks further scientific

interest. Even if the

> neat idea is true, in the Platonic sense, I still need to explain

thematic

> intransitives (say, Skt. bhávati) as intruders from the

subjunctive, so what's a

> few more?

Additional embarrassment, I'd say.

Jens