Re: [cybalist] SV: Narten Present.

----- Original Message -----

From: Urban Lindqvist

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2000 8:18 AM

Subject: [cybalist] SV: Narten Present.

 

 

Mark and Urban:

 

Urban defines Narten presents so accurately that I have nothing to add, except perhaps that the phenomenon seems to be a special case of vriddhi (the Sanskrit grammarians' term for a morphological process which leads to the introduction of "strengthened" vocalism in some environments).

 

There was a still different type of alternation in some presents. In such verbs "strong" = *o, and "weak" = *e. This pattern occurs in some Hittite verbs (including a few -mi presents), eg. sak- 'think', occurring in the sg., whereas the plural stem is sek-, and is implied by certain non-Anatolian alternations. It also resembles some stress-related alternations found in nouns, such as *pód-@... 'foot-ACC' vs. *ped-ós 'foot-GEN'. There is an ambitious recent article by Jay H. Jasanoff attempting to trace the origin of this alternation and its relation to the vocalism of the IE perfect, the mi/hi distinction in Hittite, the question of o-presents in general, middle/stative paradigms, etc. It's Sunday and my institute library is closed, but I'll check the details tomorrow. This is presumably what the *konk-/*kenk- business is all about.

 

Piotr

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2000 9:46 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Narten Present.

Mark asks:

 

What is a "Narten present"?

Urban answers:

 

Usually it's a root present with the ablaut e: ~ e + fixed accent on the root syllable instead of the more common e ~ 0 + mobile accent. Cf. Vedic 3 sg. active staú-ti < *sté:u- vs. 3 sg. middle stáv-e < *stéu- (Narten present) and 3 sg. active brávi:-ti < *mléuH- vs. 3 sg. middle bru:-té < *mluH-´ (non-Narten present).

...

 

Weak and strong are relative terms: in the present active singular you have strong grade, in others weak. So a strong grade of a Narten present is e:, of a non-Narten present e.

(I don't understand the *konk- vs. *kenk- business, though.)

 

Johanna Narten, "Zum 'proterodynamischen' Wurzelpräsens", in _Pratida:nam_ (Fs. Kuiper), 1968.