Indo-European origins of the nasal inchoative class in Germanic, Baltic, Slavic

All IE languages have verb classes formed by infixing or suffixing a nasal element to the stem. These nasal classes look very similar in all daughter languages and appear to have descended from a single PIE category. However, despite this broad similarity across the cognate IE languages, there is a puzzling divide between these languages with respect to the semantic and formal behavior of nasal-affixed verbs. In the vast majority of IE languages the nasal-affixed verbs tend to be functionally transitive and terminative and formally athematic (cf. Ved. rin[dotbelow]ák-ti 'leaves' < PIE *linék u - + - ti ). Yet there is a problematic group of IE branches--Slavic, Baltic, and Germanic, where the nasal-affixed verbs have the opposite--intransitive and inchoative--function and thematic inflection (cf. Lith. liñka 'is left, stays,' ultimately from *link u - + - é - + - ti ). There have been two traditional approaches to the formal and functional discrepancy between the traditionally reconstructed nasal class ( *linék u -ti 'leaves') and the inchoative type ( *link u -é-ti 'is left') shared by the "northern" branches. According to one theory, nasal presents in Germanic, Slavic and Baltic are post-PIE creations which only by accident came to resemble formally the nasal-affixed categories of the other IE languages. The other general approach regards the nasal presents of Germanic, Slavic and Baltic as inherited from PIE and posits that they acquired the opposite formal and functional properties within the individual histories of these branches (the usual assumption). The solutions proposed within both approaches have problematic aspects that undermine their validity. This thesis explores a third possibility--that the thematic inflection, suffix-stress and distinctive intransitive inchoative semantics of nasal presents in the "northern" branches point to a PIE h 2 e -conjugation category. It can be set up as follows: (1.sg.) *link u -h 2 é 'be left'; (1.pl.) *link u -méh x ; (2.sg.) *link u -th 2 é ; (2.pl.) *link u -(t)é ; (3.sg.) *link u -é ; (3.pl.) *link u -énti. This newly posited formation was eliminated in all IE branches except Germanic, Slavic and Baltic, where it was, on the contrary, preserved and expanded. Starting from a h 2 e -conjugation paradigm like that postulated above, all aberrant formal and semantic properties of the nasal inchoative classes in the "northern" branches receive an easy explanation.