On Sat, 23 Dec 2000 10:50:29 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
[regarding:]
>Singular Plural
>1 bhéroh2 bhéromes
>2 bhéreth2e? bhérete
>3 bhérei bhéronti
>Many thanks, Mark. Of course, /th2e/ = *th2a. The question whether there should be a final *-i in the first two persons is really moot. Hittite endings (-(ah)hi, -ti, archaic -he, -te < *-h2a-i, *-th2a-i)
I have a slight problem with this. The Hittite cuneiform for <he> and
<hi> are the *same* sign (#335 in Ruester & Neu's list). True, there
is a <he2> (#113), but it can also be read as <hi2>. The same
problems apply to the signs <te> (#249) [also read <de4> or <ti7>] and
<ti> (#37) [also read <di3> or <te9>]. Finally, we have sign #312
which is both <de> and <di>, but also <ti4>. Ruester & Neu fail to
point out which of the syllabic readings are found in Old or Young
Hittite, but I find it far from obvious that the Hittite forms should
necessarily and exclusively be reconstructed as *-h2ai and *-th2ai. A
perfectly good case can be made for *-h2i and *-th2i (with lack of
palatalization as in *dhi > ti as opposed to *ti > (z)zi and *di > si)
instead of or beside *-h2ai and *-th2ai. The shape of the past tense
1sg. *-hun shows that *-m was added to *-h2 directly, not to *-h2a.
>suggest it should be there (and also in the plural: -meni/-weni, while the stable *-o: of the 1sg in the non-Anatolian branches points to *-o-h2 (with *-o- on the analogy of -o-m?).
Vide infra.
Regarding the earlier posting:
>The details differ somewhat from author to author, but *bHere- is conjugated more or less like the rest of Class II (*bHeroh2(i), *bhereth2ai, *bHerei). I'm not sure about Adams's favourite endings; I'd have to go to my institute library to check that, and that won't happen until early next millennium. But Mark has a copy of his own and if we ask him politely, maybe he'll be good enough to check the details in the article on the "Proto-Indo-European Language" and tell us how Adams conjugates *bHere-. (Would you, Mark?) Anyway it's clear that *bHere-si and *bHere-ti are innovated (they don't occur in some branches in the thematic conjugation), while "*bHero:" is an old form.
I'm confused as to what exactly a 2sg. *-eth2ai (or *-eth2a) is
supposed to explain. It might explain the Tocharian 2sg. ending in
*-t, but that is not an exclusively thematic form, which makes it less
relevant to the discussion of the PIE thematic present. The
"problematic" forms of the 2/3sg in the thematic conjugation (which do
not have *-esi and *-eti) are the Greek and Balto-Slavic forms. They
are:
2sg. 3sg.
Greek: -eis, -ei
Lith.: -i, -a
OCS: -es^i, -etU
Now the Greek forms are easily explained if we depart from the
traditional thematic reconstructions. We have:
present past
*-esi *-es
*-eti *-et,
which by regular phonetic development become:
*-ei *-es
*-esi *-e.
The -s from the past tense is restored in the 2sg. present (but in the
wrong place):
*-eis *-es
*-esi *-e,
and then, by analogy with past tense *-es, *-e, the present tense
forms become *-eis, *-ei.
This certainly makes more sense than explaining -eis from *-eth2ai
(which cannot be done).
As to the Balto-Slavic forms, the 2sg. is indeed mysterious. The
Lithuanian form goes back to *-ei, while the final -i in OCS -es^i
must also go back to *-ei. The most likely hypothesis is that the
lack of *-s in Lithuanian was brought about by a re-analysis of 2sg.
*es-sei "you are" as *es-ei. The OCS -i is likewise transferred from
<esí> "you are", and in fact all Slavic lgs. except OCS testify to a
form *-es^I, with short *-i. Whatever the raison d'être of
Balto-Slavic 2sg. *-ei in the verb "to be" (cf. also OPruss. asmai "I
am", more anon), it has little to to with the *thematic* conjugation
("to be" is athematic).
Remains the problem of Slavic *s^. Usually this (and its
unpalatalized counterpart *x) derive from PIE *s after *i, *u, *r and
*k, but of course, this being the thematic conjugation, the preceding
sound is necessarily *e. The only other possibilities are the cluster
*sj (as in <s^iti> < *sju:- "to sew") and the PIE unitary phoneme *sw
(as in <s^estI> "six"). Maybe a case could be made for *-es-jI in
conjunction with 3sg. *-e-tU, i.e. postfixed pronouns *yos and *tos,
but, frankly, 2nd person deixis for the pronoun *yos is unexpected. I
prefer to see Slavic *-eswi as evidence for the pronominal origin of
the PIE active conjugation (postfixed *-mu and *-tu, with developement
*-tu > *-tw > *-sw > *-s in the Auslaut).
The Balto-Slavic 3rd.p. sg. *-e (Slav. *-e-tU with postfixed pronoun
[sometimes lacking], as opposed to expected -tI < *-ti in the
athematic conjugation; Lith. -a ultimately from *-e, apparently due to
the i-stems) can be seen as a B-S innovation for now. It certainly
does not point to *-ei.
In summary, I find it far from clear that *-esi and *-eti are
"innovated", based on the available evidence. The main reason for
wanting to see the Greek and Balto-Slavic forms as pointing to
something similar to the "stative" conjugation (*-eth2a(i), *-e(i), or
Beekes' *-eh1i, *-e) is surely the 1sg form *-o:, which is found
practically everywhwere. It's certainly tempting to see it as
reflecting someting with *-h2, the characteristic stative/perfect/
middle ending, but unfortunately *-oh2 doesn't quite convince. For
one thing, the vowel is wrong (we'd expect *-eh2 > -a:). For another,
where did the *-i go? PIE *-o: is mysterious, but explaining it as
*-eh2i, with somehow *-o- for *-e-, and somehow loss of *-i, raises
more questions than it answers.
Since above I've argued that the PIE thematic present endings in the 2
and 3 sg. were almost certainly *-esi and *-eti, as we'd expect them
to be (except that *-esi should be *-eswi, as shown by Slavic), let's
see how far we can get by assuming expected *-omi (or, actually:
*-omwi) for the 1sg. As it happens, it gets us quite far in
comparison with *-eh2i, although unfortunately not quite where we'd
want to get. What I suggest is *-omwi > *-omwu, with umlaut of *-i to
*-u after the labialized consonant, as we've seen in the loc.pl. *-su
(< *-sw-i). Then, loss of the nasal element, giving *-owu, which
gives *-o:u as it does in the loc.sg. of the i-stems (*-ei-i > *-e:i)
and the u-stems (*-eu-i > *-eu-u > *-e:u [or: *-ou-i > *ou-u >
*-o:u]). This *-o:u, to the best of my knowledge, would account for
most of the attested forms, except that we don't find variant forms
with -au (-a:u) in Avestan or Vedic, unfortunately.
So is there really no reason to postulate a paradigm like *-eh2(i),
*-eth2(i), *-e(i) for PIE? Actually, there is. Except that the *-e-
is not the thematic vowel, but the conjunctive marker *-e-. The
"stative" differed, in my view, from the "active" by a different order
of agglutination of the constituent elements. Whereas in the active
we have ROOT-[conjunctive *-e/o-]-[thematic *-e/o-]-personal
endings-[*-i marker], in the "stative" we have ROOT-[conjunctive
*-e/o-]-personal endings-[thematic *-e/o-]-[middle
markers]-[*-i-marker]. Thus, the perfect endings *-h2a, *-th2a, *-e,
are in my view *thematic* [*-h2-e, *-th2-e, *-0-e], whereas Hittite
-hi, -thi, -i are, at least partially, *athematic* [*-h2-i, *-th2-i,
*-0-i].
The stative conjunctive would have had [athematic] *-e-h2, *-e-th2,
*-e-(t), [thematic] *-e-h2-e, *-e-th2-e, *-e-(t)-e. Now, as I've
argued elsewhere, PIE *-t became *-h1 (but not in Anatolian, nor where
analogically restored as in 3sg. past *-et due to present *-eti) as is
shown most clearly in the ins.sg. *-et (thus in Hittite) > *-eh1, or
variants like *met- ~ *meh1- "to measure". If we consider 2sg. stat.
conj. *-eth2 and apply the rule, we would get *-eh1h2, which (as long
as we cannot give uncontroversial phonetic values to the laryngeals)
might have been simplified to *-eh1 or *-eh2. In the latter case, we
have a source for the a:-conjunctives and a:-imperfects of e.g. Latin
(-a:+m, -a:+s, etc.). The former case (1sg. *-a: < *-eh2, 2sg. *-e: <
*-eh2 < *-eth2, 3sg. *-e: < *-et or *-ee) is actually attested in the
Latin future (< conjunctive) of the i- and C-conjugations (audiam,
audie:s / emam, eme:s). Finally, generalization of *-e: would be the
source of the e:-conjunctives (e.g. Latin) [partially also from normal
thematic *-e-et] and e:-pasts [partially also from normal thematic
*-et > *-eh1, where not analogically restored] (e.g. Latin, again, as
in audi-e:-bam, em-e:-bam, and Balto-Slavic, e.g. the Slavic imperfect
in -e:(j)a:xU < -e:-e:xU etc. which is parallel to the Latin one,
except with a different form of the verb "to be").
This stative conjunctive may even be the explanation we were looking
for for the mysterious Balto-Slavic *esei "you are". We have (perhaps
in order to avoid thematic-looking athematic conjunctives of the
<ero:>, <eris> kind) a "stative" conjunctive:
*es-e-h2 > *esa: + *-i > *esai (> OPr. asmai)
*es-e-th2 > *ese: + *-i > *esei (> OCS. esi, OPr. asei)
*es-e-t > *ese: + *-i --
But for the -i, these forms are parallel to Latin audiam, audie:s,
audie:t etc.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...