On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 02:20:10 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<
jer@...> wrote:
>The past was opposed to the injunctive (the unmarked "default form") in IE
>by the presence of the augment in the past tense. When the injunctive grew
>out of fashion, the augment became superfluous, so the short form with
>only secondary endings became unambiguously past. That is the case in
>Homeric Greek (where the augment is optional) and in Anatolian (where the
>augment is lost).
If the augment is etymologically connected with the Luwian sentence
connecting particle a- (Hittite nu-), then the augment is not lost in
Anatolian, but preserved in its earlier, original function (preterite
"and then" *h1e-, presentic "and now" *nu-).
If so, the injunctive can still have been the unmarked default form,
in opposition to a _progressive_ marked with *-i: e.g. *h1es-m "I am /
I was" vs. *h1es-m-i "I am / was (in) being". When the progressive
became the unmarked present tense (already in PIE), the injunctive
retained some of its previous generality instead of simply being
pushed into exclusively past tense use.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...