[tied] Re: PIE Punctual and Durative

From: tgpedersen
Message: 46813
Date: 2006-12-29

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2006-12-28 12:43, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >> Or, better still, directly from athematic aorists, as
> >> subjunctives with the extension *-e- (or *-h1e-?) and vr.ddhi
> >> in the root (which all subjunctives have, and which makes them
> >> barytone, since the full root vowel attracts the accent).
> >>
> >
> > Why better?
> >
> > 1) You can't derive tudati verbs that way.
>
> Who says that their origin must be the same? There are resons to
> believe otherwise. For example, there are some (post-?)PIE aorists
> like *wid-é/ó- and *h1ludH-é/ó-, but never a single example of a
> *Cé(R)C-e/o- aorist anywhere. This suggests that we are dealing
> with two different stem formations, one of them indifferent to
> aspectual distinctions, the other obligatorily classified as
> present.

from Burrow, The Sanskrit Lanmguage, pp 335-336
"
The a-Aorist
The form and conjugation of the a-aorist agrees with the imperfect
accented a-class : ásicam, ásicas, ásicat, etc., cf. átudam, átudas,
átudat, etc. The stems agree in apophony, and also in accent, in the
comparatively rare instances where the unaugmented aorist forms bear
the accent: S. 1 ruhám, 2 vidás, 3 dhr.s.át, vidát, P. 3 dhvasán,
vídán, tr.pán ; regularly in the participle tr.pánt- dhr.s.ánt-,
s´ucánt-, etc., middle, s´ucáma:na-, etc.
Correspondences with other languages attest the IE date of a number of
such formations : ávidat, Gk. ido:n, inf. idei~n, Arm. egil; dr.s´an,
Gk. édrakon; áricat, cf. Gk. élipon, Arm. elik' ; budhanta, cf. Gk.
epúnthonto. At the same time there is sometimes disagreement between
languages in the assignment of a form to imperfect or aorist: Skt.
ádas´at impf. : Gk. édakon aor. ; Skt. ábhujat impf. : Gk. épuge aor.
The suffixal accent is retained in Greek in participles and
infinitives (lipó:n, lipei~n).
In addition to the regular type there are a number of a-aorists in
Sanskrit whose form agrees rather with imperfects of the first class
rather than of the sixth class since they have guņa of root :
e.g.ás´akam, ásanam, ásaram, ákaras, ágamat, atanat, ásadat. This is
the normal form of the a-aorist for roots consisting of two consonants
and the thematic vowel. Furthermore where accent occurs these forms
are accented like stems of the first present class. Examples of this
are káras, sánat, sárat, dárs´am ( = the Gk. present stem
dérkomai), gáman,
"
first class = thematic class
sixth class = tudáti class


> > 2) What would be the idea of deriving a present indicative from an
> > aorist subjunctive?
>
> If the subjunctive of punctual verbs with primary endings had the
> meaning of the close future, e.g. *gWém-e-ti 'he's going to take a
> step', it's reinterpretation as a progressive ('he's moving') was
> easy. An imminent action can be viewed as already in progress, cf.
> the use of the present continuous tense with future significance
> in English.

Why would anyone want to build a new present based on a future of the
past? Besides there's the chicken-and-egg question of thematic stem
and subjunctive aorist.
Could you spell out in more detail how you think that would have happened?

Torsten