Re: asi, ahi, ei~

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

>
>
> > That opens a possibility to solve the old
> > puzzle of why the 2sg pres. ind. of *h1es- "be" has only one -s-
> > (Skt ási, Av. ahi, Gk. ei~)...
>
> It is a puzzle? The morphological cluster *-s-s- seems to have been
> simpilified in PIE and IIr., not only in *h1es-si > *h1esi but also
> elsewhere, cf. e.g. the loc.pl. of -es stems, Skt. -as- + -su -->
> -asu.

Is that the only possible analysis?

> The analogical restoration of the *s in the 2sg. form would
> have been understandable (and certainly happened here and there),
> but why should *h1e-si have been resegmented as *h1es-i?

To create a fuller, more verb-like stem? Whatever the reason, some
Lithuanian dialects seem to have done something similar:
Schmalstieg: The Historical Morphology of the Baltic verb, p. 20
"
Far more common (in High Lithuanian) is the remodeled esmù with -ù
from the thematic conjugation. The variant esmiù was noted in Merkìne.
On analogy with the 1 sg. esmù one also encounters the dialect 2 sg.
esmì. The dialect forms pl. 1 e~smam, 2 e~smat are more rare.
"

Also, a reanalyzed 3sg *e-ti -> *et-i (re-supplied with *et-mi,
*et-si?) might have been behind the OI substantive verb.


Torsten