Re: [tied] Hittite preterites

Jens,

What about the thought that Hitt. 1sg.pret.act.
e-su-un reflects �:sun from *h1e-h1(e)s-m. (Skt.
�:sa), in which the long e: explains the lenition of
the -s- (compared to e.g. wessanta < *w�sn.to with
unlenited -ss-). Do you accept it (I'm not sure yet)?

Gr. Alwin


--- Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:

> None that I would really accept myself, but it is
> somehow inherent in the
> story, is it not? Or should we prefer not to
> understand things? Surely
> there is nothing strange in loss of a linguistic
> element. The only
> semi-valid argument I have seen is Eichner's earlier
> derivation of Hitt.
> 3sg prt. e-es-ta 'was' from *e-H1es-t with the
> augment tagged on to yield
> the length reflected by the plene writing. But that
> can be handled by the
> accent alone, since accented vowels are lengthened.
> There is, however,
> the circumstantial evidence that the ablaut es-/as-
> of eszi, asanzi is not
> repeated in the preterite: 'they were' is eser which
> could reflect
> *e-H1s-er (or *e-H1s-ent, if -er is a replacement of
> -ent). That would
> reflect expectations on two points simultaneously:
> (1) there would be the
> same ablaut in the prt. as in the prs.; (2) there
> would be no reflex of an
> injunctive of the root *H1es-, a thing PIE is
> believed not to have
> possessed because it was replaced by zero.
>
> Jens
>
> On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, P&G wrote:
>
> > > 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).
> >
> > Do you have any evidence, Jens, for this assertion
> that the augment once
> > existed in Anatolian?
> >
> > Peter
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
>
>