Re: [tied] Morphology (8/20)

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 14640
Date: 2002-08-28

Miguel:
>The vast majority of the "stative" verbs in Hittite are in the
>hi-conjugation [...] but also a considerable number of
>semantically "active" verbs [...].
>What I was saying was not that the mi-conjugation was active
>(synchronically in Hittite) and the hi-conjugation stative.

Thank you for playing the gLeN game :) So we agree on this part.


>What I said was that the hi-conjugation is definitely not resultative or
>narrative/preterite, nor easily explained as having developed from a
>resultative or narrative, while it can be
>easily explained as having developed from a stative.

Alright, got it. Now consider for a moment that Anatolian came from
the same durative-aorist-perfect system as the rest of IE. What
would be the effect if that Proto-IE system were to have developed
from a more active-stative system (stage 3: durative-aorist-stative)
in a past that is logically more recent for Anatolian languages than
the other languages?

The effect would be exactly what we see. We'd see that there are
plenty of stative verbs still lingering in the new "perfect" aspect
by the time Anatolian split. The durative-aorist-stative system
(still a somewhat active-stative system) would have changed over in
the near past (Mid IE perhaps) to durative-aorist-perfect, giving
enough time for a few "active" verbs to be shifted over in the new
system as we find in Hittite but not enough time for the dust to
fully settle. In the rest of IE, there would be more time for the
system to evolve all the way, leaving a stronger impression of a
durative-aorist-perfect system than at the IndoAnatolian stage.

So, in other words, perhaps Anatolian had split away from the rest
of IE at a time when the changeover of "stative" to "perfect"
wasn't yet fully worked out. It seems to me that this would solve
your problem and would allow you to accept the standard view
of IE a lot better. All I know is that the Anatolian languages, by
your own admission, do not fully reflect an active-stative system
either.


- gLeN


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