> >This seems to anticipate Jasanoff's idea that the s-aorist
> >originates in the 3sg, to which it is still limited in Tocharian
> >and Hittite.
>
> As I have mentioned before, I'm pretty sure it was also in
> the 3pl. *-r.s, *-e:r < *-érs. It looks as if pre-PIE had
> two distinct preterite formations, one with 3rd. person
> marker *-t (most likely connected with the demonstrative
> pronoun *to), one without it:
>
> 3sg. *-0-t and *-0
> 3pl. *-én-t and *-én > *-ér
>
> The second form was later extended with a new 3rd.person
> marker *-s (from the animate Nom.sg. of *to-, i.e. *so ?),
> yielding:
>
> 3sg. *-0-t and *-0-s
> 3pl. *-én-t and *-ér-s > *-é:r
> (unstressed *-n.t and *-r.s)
>
> I agree with Burrows' suggestion above that herein lies the
> origin of the s-aorist.
>
> Pre-PIE:
> Pret. I Pret. II
> *(h1e-)kWer-m *(h1e-)bher-m
> *(h1e-)kWe:r-s *(h1e-)bhe:r-s
> *(h1e-)kWer-t *(h1e-)bhe:r-s
> *(h1e-)kWr-ént *(h1e-)bher-rs (~ bhré:r)
>
> Normalized to:
>
> root aorist s-aorist
> *(h1e-)kWer-m *(h1e-)bhe:rs-m
> *(h1e-)kWer-s *(h1e-)bhe:rs-s
> *(h1e-)kWer-t *(h1e-)bhe:rs-t
> *(h1e-)kWr-ént *(h1e-)bhe:rs-rs
>
> Yielding Sanskrit:
>
> ákaram ábha:rs.am
> ákar ábha:r
> ákar ábha:r
> ákran ábha:rs.ur
>
>
I think it can be done much simpler.
The first thing to settle is to determine what kind of beast this 3rd
person aorist is. Burrow provides a clue:
p. 341
"
The Passive Aorist in -i
There exists a passive aorist in -i, used only in the 3rd person
singular, which is independent of any of the foregoing aorist stems :
ájña:yi 'was known', ádars´i 'was seen', etc. Unaugmented forms (which
appear in both indicative and injunctive use) are always accented on
the root syllable : s´rá:vi, pá:di, etc. Roots having i, u, r. as
medial vowel appear in the gun.a grade (aceti, ábodhi, asarji) ;
elsewhere there is normally vr.ddhi (ága:mi, áka:ri, ásta:vi,
as´ra:yi), more rarely gun.a (ajani, avadhi). The formation is taken
by some 40 roots in the RV., to which others are added later. It
appears also in Iranian (Av. sra:vi:, O. Pers. ada:riy = Skt. s´ra:vi,
ádha:ri), but not elsewhere in Indo-European.
Neglecting the augment, which was a secondary and optional addition to
preterite formations in Indo-European, it is clear that these forms
are nothing more than old neuter i-stems, without any termination,
which have been adapted to the verbal conjugation.
"
In other words, this 3rd sg aorist is a nominal form of the verb.
The 3sg s-aorist in its original endingless form has the following
characteristics: e-grade, vr.ddhi, s-suffix. In other words,
morphologically it behaves as if it were a deverbal root noun in the
nom., with Szerémenyi-lengthening. Semantically, the best I can come
up with is that the subject must have been in the dative, something
like: 'To-him, (there-exists-a) deed', for "he did".
Torsten