Re: [tied] PIE verbs (6) -- no use pretending they're simple

On Sun, 13 May 2001 02:03:31 +0200, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>VI. Verbs: Tense, person, number; 'primary' and 'secondary' endings
>
>PIE has only two tenses, present and preterite (past). Oddly enough, it is the present tense that is overtly signalled by obligatory morphological markers. Since a regular present/preterite contrast is clearly evidenced for the durative aspect only, it is likely that 'past-tense' verbs were originally used without particular time reference, and did not acquire a distinctively preterite meaning until the development of specially marked 'present continuous' forms.

Indeed the traditional view (past tense *-t, present tense *-ti) is in
violation of the typological near-universal that the present tense is
unmarked in relation to the past tense. It is therefore likely that
the "present" endings, extended with *-i, were originally "continuous"
or "durative" forms. One common way of forming continuous forms is by
the periphrasis "I am a-reading" (Eng.), "Yr wyf i yn darllen" (We.),
using a verbal noun in the locative. It is possible that *-i is
simply the locative ending, and that the auxiliary verb was dropped.
When the continous became a present and the non-continuous a past
tense, the anomaly was remedied by adding distinctive markers to the
new past tense, like the augment *h1e- (as in Greek), or by dropping
the marker *-i from the new present tense (as in Latin).

>Sets of endings contrasting the present with the preterite exist for all the three persons singular and the third person plural:
>
>Athematic stems (*gWHen-/*gWHn- 'strike')
>
> Preterite Present
>
> 1sg. *gWHén-m *gWHén-m-i
> 2sg. *gWHén-s *gWHén-s-i
> 3sg. *gWHén-t *gWHén-t-i
> ...
> 3pl. *gWHn-ént *gWHn-ént-i
>
>Thematic stems (*bHer-e- 'carry')
>
> Preterite Present
>
> 1sg. *bHér-o-m *bHér-o: (see below)
> 2sg. *bHér-e-s *bHér-e-s-i
> 3sg. *bHér-e-t *bHér-e-t-i
> ...
> 3pl. *bHér-o-nt *bHér-o-nt-i
>
>The morphologically simpler preterite endings are called 'secondary', while the present endings (usually involving the present-tense marker *-i) are called 'primary'. These traditional terms are rather confusing, and I'm in favour of avoiding them.

Yes.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...