Re: Odp: Germanic weak verbs and **do**

Dear Dennis,
I'd be less sceptical than Lehmann is about the possibility of
identifying Germanic *-d- with PIE *dheH-, mainly because there is no
convincing alternative source for it and because compounds with *dheH-
apparently existed already in PIE (and are very numerous e.g. in
Sanskrit). Some great IEists (e.g Oswald Szemerenyi) have been quite
willing to interpret some verb-forming suffixes in IE as cliticised
"auxiliaries".

As for the Slavic perfect, it's a totally transparent formation
involving a historical "perfective" participle in *-lo- and inflected
forms of 'to be'. In some Slavic languages (e.g. Polish) the cliticic
"ending" remains mobile -- it can be moved to the "first dip" of a
clause (according to Wackernagel's Law):

Ja to zrobiL-em 'I did it/have done it' = Ja-m to zrobiL (masculine)
Ja to zrobiLa-m = Ja-m to zrobiLa (feminine)

zrobiL, zrobiLa, zrobiLo was originally a participle derived from
zrobiC 'do'; now (when no suffix follows) it is interpreted as the 3rd
p. sg. of that verb. The corresponding plural is zrobili ("virile"),
zrobiLy ("non-virile"). All the endings in these forms are adjectival.

The -(e)m element in the above reflects (attested) Old Polish jesm' <
*esmi 'am'.

In the oldest Slavic languages the clitic was an autonomous word, and
the third person (now suffixless as a result of auxiliary dropping)
could be accompanied by jest' (< *esti) in the singular and soN(t') (<
*sonti) in the plural. The process of auxiliary reduction and
cliticisation took place in historical times and its stages can be
followed in written texts.

Piotr