On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 03:15:40 +0000, "Glen Gordon" <
glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>>So why is the 3pl. -ér?
>
>With your solution, we have two problems *-men and
>*-ten. With my solution, we only have the problem
>of *-er. Mine sounds better already!
*-men is not a problem, it's confirmation of the fact that the plural endings
belong together. In the neuter nouns, all **n-stems become heteroclitic (-r /
-n-), except those in *-m(e)n. The preceding nasal /m/ prevented the
development -n > -r.
>>>>This reflects the PIE thematic aorist (*-om, *-es,
>>>>*-et; *-omos, *-etes, *-ont;
>>>
>>>You mean *-omes, don't you?
>>
>>No, OCS -mU is from *-mos.
>
>Just OCS? What happened to the rest of IE?
The ending *-mos is what underlies Slavic -mU, Latin -mus and Old Irish -m (with
neutral quality). *-mes(i) is found in Tocharian A -mäs and Greek -mes. We
cannot tell whether Indo-Iranian *-mas(i) goes back to *-mes(i) or *-mos(i), and
the same goes for Armenian -mk` (< *-mVsW) and Albanian -m (which could also be
< *-men or < *-me). Anatolian (-meni, -mani, -weni, -wani), Germanic (-m <
*-mV(n)) and Baltic (*-me: ~ *-mo:) have neither *-mes nor *-mos.
>The athematic root aorists like *dox-t "gives"
"gave"?
>appear to have identical endings to the durative
>("present"). Nothing complex there.
>
>The non-aorist stems used special aorist endings to
>convey the aorist while aorist stems simply used the
>durative endings in MIE. The durative and the aorist
>aspects are linked together as part of what was once
>the "active" and this is the reason why their endings
>are virtually the same, the perfect being originally
>the opposing "stative"... erh... but this gets into
>Early IndoTyrrhenian morphology...
>
>The thematic present in MIE would simply have been:
>
> *-e-m *-é-mes
> *-e-s *-é-te
> *-e *-éne
>
>No biggy. I still don't understand what the problem
>is with this idea.
The problem is that there is no difference in accentuation between the forms of
the present ~ imperfect and the aorist in the basic athematic paradigm. Both
have stress on the root in the singular, stress on the endings in the dual and
plural. Therefore, there was no stress-shifting "aoristic" suffix **-e.
We have a difference of accentuation in the thematic forms, where the aorist
stresses the thematic vowel, while the present and imperfect generally do not,
but (as I said), this is not something which is exclusive to the aorist. In
particular, the durative suffixes in the present/imperfect tense show the same
pattern (-sk-é-). The difference in accentuation can therefore not be
attributed to an aoristic suffix **-e.
Furthermore, your "MIE thematic present" paradigm is in clear violation of the
facts, which are that thematic paradigms always have columnar accent (either
'-o-m ~ '-o-mes, or -ó-m / -ó-mes).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...