Piotr explaining how to spot a Narten present:
> The tenaciousness of the full vocalism of the root
> syllable. For example, the *-nt- participle is
> *bHér-ont- rather than *bHr-ént- (we have the
> latter type in *gWn-ént-, *kWr-ént- and *gWHn-ént-,
> for example).
First of all, Acrostatic Regularization can explain
the difference in accent, which can only make sense
if *bHer- was, even at that time, treated as a
thematic stem in opposition to those athematics like
*gWen-, *kWer- and *gHWen- above. That means that
the stage at which the durative and aorist are
indistinguishable must predate the rule of Acrostatic
Regularization.
In fact, since we see ablaut here, it's possible that
these forms (or the basis of these forms) even predate
Syncope. If we take away the effects of Acr.Reg, we
have *bHer-ént- versus *gWn-ént-, *kWr-ént- and
*gWHn-ént-. Perhaps just before this time, duratives
could have been created from the nominative form of
deverbal stems as I said earlier.
So a root noun like *bHe:r-s created a durative form
*bHe:r-ti. It's participle was then naturally
*bHer-ént- by analogy with the already existing
ablaut patterns. (Note that the genitive of *bHe:rs
would be *bHerás afterall, inherited from before
Syncope from MIE nominative *bérasa and genitive
*barása).
I really suspect that Narten presents can be
completely explained with post-Syncope rules. The
stage we are speaking of where the durative and
aorist are united into a single aspect is up to a
point just after Syncope but before Acrostatic
Regularization in early Late IE.
> To be sure, most people reconstruct the participle
> of the thematic type as *bHéro-nt-, but the alleged
> thematic vowel untypically disappears in the weak
> cases in Ved. bHáratas < *bHér-n.t-os, so perhaps
> one should derive the participle directly from the
> root verb *bHe:r-.
Again, this is easily solved with Acr.Reg since
before this time, the genitive could only have been
*bHer-nt-ás. The ablaut pattern is normal for this
period because all the pretonic syllables are
"zeroed" regularly: *bHé:r- => *bHer- and *-ént- =>
*-nt-.
Tada! :)
= gLeN
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