From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 7200
Date: 2001-04-23
>At any rate, let's be honest here. A verb form such as *e:s- isSpanish <estar> "to be" < Lat. <sta:re> "to stand".
>exactly what the expected perfect of *es- should be based on the
>perfect of *ed- (*e:d-). Logically, there should have been a
>previous stage of IE where *es- was more regular than it appears
>in Common IE. Logically, there should have been a stage where
>*bheux- was _not_ bound to *es-. If we assume for a moment that
>*e:s-, apparently meaning "to sit", was at one time the perfect
>form of *es- than we might suspect an earlier meaning of *es-
>rather than "to be". It may have once meant "to remain" and thus
>in the perfect, it would mean "to stop in one spot, to stay".
>The idea of a verb like "to remain" later being given the meaningI don't think there's any need for "to remain" or "stop". *h1esm-m(i)
>of "to be" is not without examples in English where one can say
>"He remains unmarried", which is equivalent to, "He _is
>still_ unmarried". Obviously, we can see that in this case, the
>subject doesn't actually remain in one location but rather that
>he remains in a certain abstract _state_ of unmarriedness.
>
>Furthermore, we all know that while *bheux- CAN double for "to be"
>in some aspects, its main meaning seems to be "to grow" or "to
>appear". If *bheux- is not the original "to be", than we might
>suspect *es- is a fraud as well. There are many languages where
>"to be" is simply unneeded in simple equational sentences like
>"John (is a) fireman" - this is contrary to Common IE but perhaps
>not in earlier forms of the language.
>
>So in summary, I would suspect it possible that the following
>semantic development occured:
>
> *est "to remain" --> "to be yet" --> *est "to be"
> **e:sxa "to stop" --> *e:sxoi "to sit"