Re: [tied] Re: PIE i- and u-stems again

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 47523
Date: 2007-02-17

On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:03:40 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>On 2007-02-16 21:54, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>
>> You said earlier that words of the "Cato type" may have been
>> "originally -n(t)- participles of stative verbs, derived in
>> turn from adjectives (*X-h1-on(t)- '[singled out as] being
>> X').". But stative verbs, like e.g. Slavic slabêti (< slabU
>> "weak") do not contain the thematic vowel. The suffix is
>> *-éh1- (aor. & inf.) ~ *-éih1- (pres.sg.) ~ *-h1i-
>> (pres.pl.), not *-o-eh1- ~ *-o-eih1- ~ *-o-h1i-.
>
>Isn't it *-é-h1- (aor.), *-é-h1-je/o-, where *é is the thematic vowel
>(before a voiceless consonant), corresponding to athematic
>*-éh1-/*-h1-jé/ó-?

I don't think so: the "lengthening" of the thematic vowel
(i.e. e > o) took place before zero grade, as shown for
instance by *-o-syo < *-%-esyo. If the full grade of the
suffix was *-eh1(i)- (and I don't believe in suffixes of the
shape -C-), a thematic vowel before it would have gone to
/o/. I'm also not aware of a formal distinction anywhere
between deverbative essive/fientives (e.g. sêdêti) and
deadjectival essive/fientives (e.g. slabêti). Is there?

As I think I said earlier here, I would reconstruct the
original paradigm of these verbs as athematic (as still
preserved in Lithuanian and Aeolic Greek):

present: aorist:
*-éih1-mi *-éh1-m
*-éih1-si *-éh1-s
*-éih1-ti *-éh1-t
*-h1i-més *-h1i-mé
*-h1i-té *-h1i-té
*-h1i-énti *-h1i-é:r

Most languages have thematized the type, Slavic generalizing
*-eih1-e/o- in the present stem and *-eh1- in the infinitive
and aorist stem. The type is still basically athematic in
Baltic, with generalized *-h1i- in the present, *-eh1- in
the infinitive. Greek generalized *-eh1- to the present
(Aeolic <phile:mi>, thematized in Attic <phileo:>). In
Sankrit it may have been 3pl. *-h1i-ánti, reinterpreted as
thematic ye/yo-stem *-h1-yá-nti, which led to *-(h1)yo:,
*-(h1)yesi, etc.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...