Re: [tied] Hittite preterites

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 8:05 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Hittite preterites


> [Jens:] So 'to be' is not enough? I would appeal to the augment also to explain the long circumflex vowels of Lithuanian e:~jo 'went', e:~me: 'took' (e: being the dotted e) which would be regular from *e-H1ey-, *e-H1em- + prt. morphemes. I have heard the same analysis being tried for OE eode 'went',but that is quite forced.

One or two examples of the augment surviving before a _consonant_ in one of the "non-augmenting" languages would decide the issue, but it's precisely this kind of decisive evidence that's lacking.

>> [Peter:] Watch it! No one said "tight knit special group" But I did say "innovating group". We have had this discussion before. A quick answer is paradigmatic oppositions, verb structures and vocabulary.

> [Jens:] I know some remarkable vocabulary items that combine Gk. and Arm., but all three? Well, perhaps ikti~nos, c.in, s´yéna- (a bird of prey).

If we're dealing with far-flung relics of an ancient sprachbund (as opposed to a monophyletic "branch"), the distribution of areal innovations within it can be expected to be incomplete. Phrygian had the augment too, and Albanian, while not showing clear traces of the augment (but didn't Hamp attempt to identify its sandhi effects?) is arguably
another member of the same grouping in some respects (e.g. by having prohibitive *meh1 [Alb., Arm., Gk., IIr.]).

Piotr





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