Active / Stative

On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 15:39:55 +0000, elmeras2000
<jer@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> I suppose we can agree that the *-e of the perfect endings,
>> at least in the singular, acts in every respect as a
>> secondary addition. It does not attract the accent, it does
>> not affect the o-grade of the verbal root.
>
>That is very accurate.
>
>> Logically, the
>> perfect/middle endings at some point in pre-PIE, before the
>> addition of *-e, was therefore:
>>
>> 1. *-h2
>> 2. *-th2
>> 3. *-0
>
>Yes, that's what it looks like. But these endings are never seen in
>isolation. While the perfect has the added non-ablauting *-e which
>does not influence the accent, the middle voice has an ablauting *-e
>which does influence the accent in the way a syllabic ending does.

The middle has zero grade (e-grade in Narten forms) and
columnar accent on the endings, just like a certain type of
thematic forms, both verbal (tudáti) and nominal.

>I
>have no clear idea why this is so, except that I have had some of
>the same thoughts as you but without being really convinced.
>
>> It's possible that the Skt. 1sg. middle past ending -i
>> directly reflects this, as well as the Hittite 1sg.
>> hi-conjugation preterite -hun (< *-h2-m., not *-h2a-m).
>
>Possible, yes, but not very likely. Even for Sanskrit it can be
>shown that the full-grade ending is -a, while -i is a zero-grade
>alternant (1sg opt. root-aor. as'i:ya : 1sg mid. s-aor. á-mam.s-i),

But why zero grade? A Sanskrit innovation?

>and for -hun we have a better explanation as a replacement of -ha as
>preserved in Luvian by adjustment to the corresponding ending -un of
>the mi-conjugation.

If Sankrit can have a zero grade -&2, so can (pre-)Hittite.
I just don't see the need to replace a perfectly sensible
ending *-h2a (next to 2sg. *-th2a). On the other hand, if
the ending was *-h2, alternating with -a (*-&2), I can see
why it would have been analogically replaced with -hun.

The question is whether an ending *-h2 can be explained as
secondary (zero grade, as you say), or that it's a remnant
of the stage where *-e had not yet been added.

>>
>> If I'm correct that the 1/2 sg. endings derive from a
>> Nostratic stative in *-k, *-tk, the development *-k > *-h2
>> also requires that the velar stop once stood in the absolute
>> Auslaut.
>
>I would suppose this is true, although that involves a much longer
>and much less secure perspective than the rest.
>
>> As to the nature of the *-e, my best guess is that it is
>> indeed the thematic vowel. Assuming the same element was
>> added both to the perfect and the middle, we see that the
>> middle forms have *o before *-r, *-m, *-i (*-t-o-r,
>> *-dhw-o-m, *-nt-o-i), which is consistent with an
>> interpretation as the thematic vowel. Two problems remain:
>> the fact that the vowel appears as *a after *h2 (e.g.
>> *-h2ai), and the fact that in some middle forms, the vowel
>> appears as *-o when nothing follows. I would suggest that
>> the first phenomenon is regular: a thematic vowel coloured
>> by *h2 does not yield *o before a voiced segment (we see the
>> same in archaic forms of the word "woman", such as Greek
>> gunaik- and Armenian kanay- < *gWn.h2-a-ih2-). The second
>> phenomenon (-o for expected -e in the middle), I would
>> explain analogically: the (past) middles in -o were
>> secondarily created by deleting the middle marker *-i, when
>> that had been re-interpreted as a present marker.
>
>I fail to see the problem, or even the topic: The prefect endings
>are never followed by anything voiced (or anything else), so the
>thematic vowel is expected to behave just like the phoneme /e/ which
>produces /a/ in connection with /H2/.

Yes.

>I do not see the necessity of
>the structure you posit for 'woman', particularly I do not see a
>thematic vowel in it by any serious standard I can think of.

Well, the nom.sg. is gune:/bane: (*gWn.h2-ah2), with the
normal a:-stem nominative ending, and a:-stems are thematic
(their athematic counterpart are the i:-stems). We've been
over this before.

>Phonologically the added vowel of the perfect could well be the
>thematic vowel, but that of the middle voice cannot.

Why? As I said above, the vowel and the accent and the
Ablaut and everything behave consistently with a thematic
(-0-é-) paradigm.

>And none of
>them is too well in keeping with anything else we know about the
>thematic vowel. Basically, the vowels here concerned do not form
>stems, so the word "thematic" must have a different meaning, and
>then the whole point is hard to see. We do not otherwise
>see "thematic" vowels dangling after ready-made wordforms, so there
>is really nothing in the grammar that helps us if we identify the
>element with one known from the grammar.

Terminology ("thematic vowel") aside, what I mean is that
the morpheme *-e(-) has the same origin in the active
paradigms as in the perfect/middle. The difference is
merely one of placement. In the active we have:

theme-thematic vowel-ending (e.g. *bher-e-t)

In the "stative", we may have:

theme-ending-"thematic vowel" (e.g. *woid-h2-e)

>> If the *-e is the thematic vowel, it needs to be explained
>> why in the perfect/middle system it appears _after_ the
>> desinences, instead of _before_ them, as in the active
>> system. The only solution I can think of requires that the
>> thematic vowel in these forms indeed be an object marker
>> (somehow connected to the anaphoric pronoun *i/*e-),
>> something which is otherwise impossible to prove. It's as
>> if in the active system, incorporation proceeded according
>> to the model V-O-S, while in the "stative" (perfect/middle)
>> system, incorporation followed the model V-S-O. Given the
>> fact that the active and the stative systems are
>> fundamentally different (e.g. in their desinences), I can
>> see no problem with the assumption that they were formed
>> according to very different models of agglutination
>> (enclitic syntax).
>
>I completely fail to se what an object marker would be doing here.

Marking a third person object, what else?
Neither the perfect nor the middle have exclusively
intransitive semantics in PIE. Generalization of
incorporated 3rd. p. object to all forms would not be a
surprising development.

> I also fail to see the principle whereby the thematic vowel could be
>used to mark the object. Otherwise it expresses belonging. That
>incidentally makes some sense: If the bare endings were passive
>("was killed"), the extension by a morpheme of belonging would be
>possessive ("has killed"), which comes quite close.

Yes, that would be another possibility, but it would have to
be explained better, because I don't quite get the mechanism
you're proposing.

>Still, I do not
>know why the morpheme is placed where it is, and why there is an
>ablauting vowel in the mediopassive.


>> On the other hand, the thematic vowel marking the
>> subjunctive, being a modification of the verbal stem itself
>> (turning it into a [thematic] adjective?), must always be
>> closely linked to the verbal stem, regardless of whether the
>> form belongs to the active or the stative system. In this
>> analysis, we would then expect a "stative" conjunctive to
>> show the desinences:
>>
>> 1. *-a-h2(a)
>> 2. *-e-th2(a)
>> 3. *-e-(e).
>>
>> It is trivial to derive a form like the Latin future (<
>> conjunctive) in -a:m, -e:s, -e:t from such a "stative
>> conjunctive".
>
>We have other explanations of the Latin endings that do not need all
>these speculations.

Such as?

>I also completely fail to see why the
>subjunctive would derive from a mediopassive form.

If the active had a subjunctive, why shouldn't the
perfect/middle have one?


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