Miguel:
>Note the regular development **-n[C] > *-r[C] in the 2nd and 3rd plural,
>but not in the 1pl., where
>*-n was preserved after nasal *-m-.
Since Hittite reflects /-men/ and /-ten/, not /-men/
and */-ter/, I can provide a smoother solution that
accually accounts for the facts.
The endings were once *-mene and *-tene in Mid IE. In
other words, *-n was not in final position at the time
of *-n > *-r. The rhoticizing of *-n occured _before_
the deletion of unstressed schwas, eventually leaving
*-men and *-ten (as we ACTUALLY find). Also, according
to Mid IE penultimate accentuation, the endings must
have been stressed, supplying the reason for their
non-zero grade.
>This reflects the PIE thematic aorist (*-om, *-es,
>*-et; *-omos, *-etes, *-ont;
You mean *-omes, don't you?
>Against amalgamating the imperfect and the aorist at >the PIE stage is the
>fact that there is one important
>formal difference between the thematic aorist and
>the thematic imperfect. The latter is conjugated like a normal thematic
>verb (*[h1e-]bh�r-et), while
>the former invariably follows the tud�ti-type, i.e.
>the thematic vowel is stressed and the root appears in zero grade
>(*[h1e-]bhugh-�-t).
It's most probable that at some point in the past,
the durative (imperfect) and the aorist used the same
endings. By accepting that Mid IE had a penultimate
stress, the reason for the accent difference is simple:
The aorist endings are merely the secondary endings
(originally the "primary" endings) with what was once
an additional final schwa. Thus, in Mid IE, before
schwa deletion:
durative aorist
1s *-em *-em-e
2s *-es *-es-e
3s *-e *-e-he
The source of this schwa ending is merely a general
locative demonstrative *?e seen elsewhere, having a
temporal & spatial meaning of "at that place or time".
By its suffixation, the stress predictably shifted to
the next syllable, onto the thematic vowel. (Of course
as I've said many times, the 3s durative adopted the
familiar deictic *-t much later in the Late IE period.)
Looks pretty clear to me. Does anyone see any problems
with this analysis?
- gLeN
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