Re: PIE -*C-presents

On Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:35:42 -0000, "tgpedersen"
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>> >> It is also restricted to the third person.
>> >
>> >And according to Burrows and Jasanoff, so was the s-aorist, which
>> >was the line of readoning I tried to carry on.
>>
>> My point was that it's a much more recent formation (as also
>> witnessed by the fact that it's restricted to Indo-Iranian).
>
>I don't get that line of reasoning. Why can't it be a sole survival
>instead?

It's the most economical explanation. Furthermore, there is
no trace in IE of an inherited "passive" category. An
impersonal passive also exists in Celtic, but formally it
has nothing to do with the impersonal passive aorist in
Indo-Iranian. It is generally considered to be a Celtic
innovation (built out of remnants of the old hi-conjugation
middle). The Sanskrit form could in principle be the lone
survival of *something else*, but not of an aorist passive.

>> >> Root nouns rarely have e(:)-grade,
>> >> and they always lose nominative *-s after a resonant.
>> >
>> >Awesome. Now we have an origin for root aorists too.
>>
>> Root aorists do not have e:-grade.
>
>Do root nouns that lose nominative *-s after resonant still have
>Szerémenyi lengthening?

Yes, of course. *h2né:r, *bhó:r, like *p&2té:r, *h2ák^mo:n,
etc.

>> >> Furthermore, the *-s in
>> >> the 3pl. is added to the verbal plural morpheme *-en >
>> >> *-(e)r, not to any nominal plural. If the precursor of the
>> >> s-aorist was ever a nominal form, it had already become a
>> >> purely verbal form by the time of PIE.
>> >
>> >And that might be exactly why it was being mechanically applied to
>> >the plural by analogy of the singular?
>>
>> I don't understand.
>
>If the 3sg had -s (no other ending at first) the way to construct a
>plural for it might be to add -s to an ending imported from the 3pl
>perfect?

Yes, that would be the way to construct a verbal plural. The
way to construct a plural out of a root-noun acting as
passive participle would be to add *-es.


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