In the Festschrift für Paul Kretschmer 267–74 (1926), in an article entitled Gedanken über den lateinischen ā-Konjunktiv, N. S. Trubetzkoy proposed very convincingly the theory that the ā-subjunctive of Italic and Celtic was, in reality, originally an optative not a subjunctive. His thesis was that beside the athematic optative in jē/ī (Lat. siem, siēs, siet / sīmus, etc., Gk. eíēn/eîmen, Skt. syām, etc.), there were two distinct optatives for thematic indicatives, one in oi (Gk. phéroi, Skt. bharet, Goth, bairai, etc.), which is the one generally recognized, and another in ā found in Italic and Celtic to the exclusion of the oi optative.