Re: Thematic root aorist

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> On 2006-07-24 16:52, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen wrote:
>
> > As for the abolition of the subjunctive structure,
> > I believe that has quite a good chance of being
> > correct. What has convinced me is the strange fact
> > that it is not only the thematic stem formation of
> > the verbs concerned that is missing, the particular
> > verbs do not in fact occur in *any* form. If the
> > thematic inflection of *bher-, *H2eg^-, *weg^h-,
> > *pekW-, *dhegWh-, *leg^-, *seg^h-, etc. was just a
> > morphological innovation which Anatolian did not
> > share, then one would expect the verbs to show
> > whatever stem-formation they had before they
> > took on thematic shape. But the verbs just are not
> > there.
>
> But can you imagine the complete abolition of a root
> (let alone a class of roots) so that it disappears
> together with its derivatives, no matter how obscured?
> Let's imagine that the word <God> becomes taboo in
> English after a revolution staged by fanatical atheists
> (or, for different reasons, after a revolution staged
> by religious fundamentalists). As a result, <god> (as a
> common noun), as well as <godly>, <goddess>, <godmother>
> etc. might disappear as well, even if not officially
> proscribed. But <giddy> and <gossip> would surely slip
> by, since it takes a historical linguist rather than a
> sans-culotte (or a blasphemy-hunting zealot) to spot
> the etymological connection.

And that's not even as unlikely as what traditional
linguistics would have us believe, namely that a whole
class of roots disappeared not on semantic, but on
_morphological_ grounds. Surely, they would have found
a way of recycling them by assigning them to a different
morphological class?

> Of course it's hard to be sure of anything when one
> faces something as odd as the Anatolian situation, but
> I'm inclined to believe that the generally high level
> of lexical replacement in Anatolian, the "flattening" of
> the verb system (through the loss of the present/aorist
> distinction), and the limited documentation of the
> Anatolian languages sufficiently account for the absence
> of many inherited stems.

Erh, isn't that circular? "Flattening", "loss" imply a
direction.

> Actually, _some_ of the verbs in question do display root
> cognates in Anatolian. For example, several formations
> derived from *leuk- are attested in Hittite, confirming
> the reconstruction of a PIE root aorist middle and the
> associated causative, but the expected "simple thematic
> present" (or rather aor.subj.) *léuk-e/o- (as in Skt.
> rócate) fails to turn up. This, in my opinion, militates
> against the total abolition theory but is compatible with
> the hypothesis that it was just the subjunctive that was
> lost, and the *CéC-e/o- subjunctives had not yet become
> true presents by the time Proto-Anatolian split away from
> the rest of IE. Note also that "pseudothematic" middles
> like CLuw. ziyar(i) < *k^éj-e(/o-r) apparently were not
> abolished in Anatolian (Hittite just used an innovated
> middle ending in <kitta(ri)> but didn't proscribe the
> root).
>
> > The Tocharian paucity of thematic presents is in my
> > opinion different from this. As I see it, it was the
> > usual fate of pre-Tocharian aorist subjunctives to
> > become present indicatives, and Tocharian repeated the
> > process with the subjunctive of the new aorist (s-aorist)
> > which yielded the se/o-present. The small number of
> > thematic presents in Tocharian represents then, I submit,
> > the tenacious core presents that would not yield, the
> > last ones to survive, not the first ones to be made.
>
> Now, in Tocharian we do seem to find reflexes of *g^énh1-e/o-,
> *gWém-e/o-, *léuk-e/o- functioning as subjunctives rather
> than presents. This suggests to me a shift of function in
> which the above-quoted forms are subjunctives that might
> one day become present indicatives -- queuing up for the
> status, so to speak -- while the descendants of *h2ág^-e/o-
> and *bHér-e/o- (plus perhaps a few others) are already on
> the other side.
>

This is my take on it: The fact that a class of indicatives
correspond to the subjunctive is not because those indicatives
are derived from the sbjunctive, but because at a time when
the indicative/subjunctive division didn't exist, the form
which is now the subjunctive was the only one. The present
_athematic_, then, was the one which in its capacity of
strictly indicative relegated the once sovereign thematic
inflection to the funtion of subjunctive. Cf. the corresponding
situation in Udmurt/Mari where the -sk- stems have relegated
those forms in Udmurt to the future tense which are both future
and present in Mari.

> > Under these views, both Anatolian and Tocharian are
> > derivable from IE as we know it without any serious
> > problems. For other reasons, the two branches may still
> > be the first ones to split away from the common trunk,
> > but it is not shown right here.
>
> PIE "as we know it" is a tricky notion, since PIE is
> what we reconstruct it to be. Anatolian and Tocharian
> evidence may force us to revise the conservative
> reconstruction, which was essentially arrived at
> without taking those "outgroups" into account. In
> handbooks, *bHér-e/o- is often the first example of
> a reconstructible PIE verb stem, and will probably
> continue to be so used at least until the dust settles
> and one of the currently competing analyses gains
> general approval. I don't mind it at all: we need a
> common frame of reference, even if it's provisional
> (like everything in science).
>

Some of those verbs that have -ier- (eg. partieren) in
German exist in English (part), but without the suffix.
Now what should I reconstruct for PGerm.? This requires
deep thought.


Torsten