Re: [cybalist] SV: The long awaited athematic answer to the athemat

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

From: Urban Lindqvist

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 11:42 AM

Subject: [cybalist] SV: The long awaited athematic answer to the athematic question... Oy veh.

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

From: Glen Gordon

Another reason to accept this is that the athematic Tocharian 3rd person appears to be /-a"s./, from a demonstrative *se according to Pedersen, attached to a BARE root! Comments?

I’m not sure what the Tocharian form is supposed to prove. It doesn’t even go back to Proto-Tocharian (Tocharian A pikäš ‘writes’ = Tocharian B pinkäM; A lukäš ‘illuminates’ = B lukšäM).

There is an interesting explanaion for this -äs. (by Jasanoff if I remember correctly): *-ti, *-dhi > *-si > -s. (before word boundary). Supporting evidence: imperative pis. (Toch. A), päs. (Toch. B) of the verb i- 'to go'. This would be the ordinary imperative particle p- + a reflex of *i-dhi. We also have the subjuntive s´mäs. ('he'll come', from the root käm- < *gwem-) < *gwem-e-ti (with palatalization and syncope).

I suppose this would also mean that the athematic ending had to be taken over from the thematic verbs; they differ only in palatalization of the preceding consonant. Any comments?

Urban

It's as convincing as any explanation may ever be with regard to the historical phonology of Tocharian. It looks far better considered (the supporting evidence elucidates the question of the word-final behaviour of palatalised *t/*dH, with I suppose, *-śi as the pre-apocope stage) than Holger Pedersen's guess. Pedersen's book on Tocharian was published in 1941 and many of his opinions have been superseded by more recent scholarship.

Piotr