Greek 3sg prs.

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>[... On Gk. 3sg prs. -ei vs. other IE *-eti]
>   Perhaps in early IE times the final -t was only present when the verb
> had no noun subject [...].

That song has been popular before, but it takes more to constitute a new
morphological parameter of the IE verb. Most importantly, it would be very
odd that, out of such a duplicity, the unmarked form should be
consistently chosen by thematic verbs, and the marked one by athematic
verbs - and the marked one by ALL verbs in all other IE languages. The
form was explained by Cowgill at the VI.Fachtagung as the phonetically
regular outcome of IE *-eti in Greek unaccented position.

Jens