Re: [tied] Hittite preterites

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 02:20:10 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
> <jer@...> wrote:
>
> >The past was opposed to the injunctive (the unmarked "default form") in IE
> >by the presence of the augment in the past tense. When the injunctive grew
> >out of fashion, the augment became superfluous, so the short form with
> >only secondary endings became unambiguously past. That is the case in
> >Homeric Greek (where the augment is optional) and in Anatolian (where the
> >augment is lost).
>
> If the augment is etymologically connected with the Luwian sentence
> connecting particle a- (Hittite nu-), then the augment is not lost in
> Anatolian, but preserved in its earlier, original function (preterite
> "and then" *h1e-, presentic "and now" *nu-).
>
> If so, the injunctive can still have been the unmarked default form,
> in opposition to a _progressive_ marked with *-i: e.g. *h1es-m "I am /
> I was" vs. *h1es-m-i "I am / was (in) being". When the progressive
> became the unmarked present tense (already in PIE), the injunctive
> retained some of its previous generality instead of simply being
> pushed into exclusively past tense use.

The two do not exclude each other, any more than the use of *nu as a
"connective" excludes its continued use in the maning 'now'. One might
assume that sentences in the present and past tense could be introduced by
the words *nu 'now' and *H1e 'then', respectively, as the need was felt.
A most interesting point made by Hoffmann is that the verb 'to be' forms
no injunctive. Kurylowicz described the functional range of the
Gatha-Avestan injunctive as equivalent to than of a nominal sentence. So,
if something just 'is' what is being said about it, the 'is' is not
mentioned, unless there is some restriction on it that needs to be
expressed in a verbal inflection.

I see no need to separate the protolanguages from which Anatolian and
other IE have come just because they have retained different parts of the
old system. That can be said of any two languages.

Jens