On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> [...] There is a whole family of feminine abstracts referring to
> actions, states or features, derived from verbs or adjectives
> (sporadically also nouns), involving *-t- (*-t-, *-tah2-, *-ti-,
> *-tu-, *-twah2-, to list but a few), and not obviously associated with
> any *-es-stems. Why shouldn't they belong together? [...]
That's where I started too, but it is with this matter as with IE
o-vocalism which many people just lump together as "o-grade": when you
keep looking at the specifics you find that some types of examples belong
together, while others don't. The PPP in *-tó- is definitely related to
the root-noun extension /-t-/ (which alternates with zero), and also with
the noun types in *-tu- and *-ti-. But there is no way we can squeeze an
underlying vowel into the position between the root and the /t/ here, so a
suffix alternant *-eto- just cannot be related (unless we are *very* wrong
on fundamental points). And since the s-stems have alternants with /t/
anyway, and do have a vowel in their suffix form, *-eto- is in fact the
expected adjectival form of s-stems. Then, if the collective form of
*-eto- means the same as the s-stem, it looks just like derivation gone
full circle (much like the causative middle reverting to the meaning of
the base-verb).
None of the two sets of analyses is finished to our ultimate satisfaction:
The s/t-complex somehow belongs with stative verbs, and the three
allomorphs *-es-, *-et- (of *-eto-) and *-eH1- may be originally
identical, but this only begs the question: by what rules? The other set,
that of the to-ptc., equally plainly contains the variants *-no- and
*-(e)nt-, and even the *-en- of (some) n-stems, quite possibly even all
r/n/nt-stems: Agent nouns in *-n-, *-t- and *-nt- (and zero) appear to be
in complementary distribution in an archaic layer of the lexicon, and the
passive ptc. *-to-/*-no- looks just like a derivative of belonging made
from it. Again, the rules are not clear, though they are getting clearer
by the hour. We have been through some of the problematics on this list
already. I believe the matter is ripe for a real treatment in public.
Jens