Re: [tied] Re: Eggs from birds and swift horses (was: the palatal s

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:45:43 +0000, elmeras2000 <jer@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> The lengthening of the root vowel in the s-aorist suggests to me
>that the
>> original shape was *deyk^s > *de:yk^s, with length due to normal
>> "Szemerényi lengthening", as in the nom.sg.. If the origin was
>really
>> *swe, then it had already been reduced to *-s(w) by the time the
>> lengthening set in.
>
>Yes, I think it's pretty obvious that the lengthening seen in the
>sigmatic aorist stem and in the animate nominative are connected
>with the only other thing they have in common, i.e. the /s/.
>
>Now, if the reflexive morpheme changes *H2ewg- to *H2weg-s-, then
>*de:yk^-s- apparently contains a different morpheme (which has also
>become *-s, but without causing metathesis). We do not see the
>nominative marker causing metathesis, so this looks right.

Agreed.

>I do not
>think the verbal desinences contained the w-element of the personal
>pronouns. If you write it into the original forms, you have to
>construe a whole arsenal of additional rules to get it out.

I think the verbal desinences *did* contain the w-element of the personal
pronouns. Thats why the 2sg. ending is *-s (< **-tw) and not *-t, as we
would otherwise have had.

>> At the risk of repeating myself, I prefer to explain the *-s as a
>third
>> person ending, derived either from [the nominative **su of] *s(w)e
>(which
>> was a 3rd. person pronoun before it became a reflexive) or the
>> demonstrative *so.
>
>If the point is that it makes sense as a reflexive, it specifically
>does *not* have nominative function.

The point was that pre-PIE had matching 1, 2 and 3rd personal pronouns
**mu, **tu and **su (cf. Proto-Uralic *mV, *tV, *sV). The third person
pronoun later changed into a reflexive pronoun (cf. Old Tamil ta:n_ 3rd.
person pronoun -> Mod Tamil ta:n_ reflexive pronoun), and lost its
nominative. The reflexive ccusative remains parallel to the 1/2 pronouns
(*me < *mwe [or *mme], *twe, *swe).

>Tocharian has many verbal stems that can only have arisen in the
>sigmatic aorist. And Hittite at least has some.

According to Adams, the s-aorist survives in Tocharian only in the Class
III preterites. Those are precisely the ones I meant, which have -s(a) as
a third person singular desinence. I reject the notion that they are
survivals of the s-aorist: they represent the seed from which the s-aorist
grew. In fact, Tocharian itself created an s-middle by extending the /s/
(augmented with -a:-) throughout the paradigm in the middles of the Class
III verbs.

I don't think the thematic -se/so- presents are relevant in this context.
They are thematic, they're presents, and they're hard to tell apart (at
least in Toch A) from *sk^e-presents.

>The sigmatic aorist
>is not an outgrowth of the root aorist, but the regular aorist of
>verbs forming an sk-present.

In Hittite at least (and, according to Adams, also in a pre-stage of
Tocharian, see "Tocharian", p. 76), *every* verb could potentially form a
sk-present.

>That makes the -s- of the aorist a
>suffix, not a desinence, from the beginning.

Suffixes can become desinences and desinences can become suffixes. If your
objection is that there is no logical connection between the present-tense
suffix *-sk(e/o)- and my proposed 3rd.person desinence-turned-suffix *-s,
then I can say more or less the same about *-sk(e/o)- and your proposed
reflexive-pronoun-turned-suffix *-swe. What's the connection?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...