--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
[JER:]
> It is commonplace that languages carry inherited stuff
> > around with them for millenia on end (think of the three genders
> and
> > the ablaut grades which have long since lost any function they
may
> > have had), but it is not a generally observed fact that they
just
> > invent funny morphological distinctions without any functional
> > correlate.
>
> Ablaut functions as a tense marker in English, e.g. _sing_ v.
_sang_
> and _fling_ v. _flung_. That's not so different from one of its
> original functions, perhap the only original _function_ as opposed
> to a mere phonetic concomitant.
I do not dispute this, and may sweeping statement was perhaps to
general. The point is about the opposite really, that such things
are not *invented* without a purpose. That they are copied once they
have arisen is another matter.
[...]
> One of the ideas floating around is that thematicising a noun made
> it definite. (Demonstrative *e again.) I'm not sure that that
idea
> can be disproved. The problem is that is very difficult to
discern
> any meaning in the thematic vowel [...].
One function of thematicising (sic?) which is plain to see is that
of appurtenance: Ordinals are formed by the addition of *-e/o- to
the cardinals (plus a shipload of analogy, but not enough to fool
Szemerényi), as 'belonging to seven' or 'characterized by the number
seven' is 'seventh'. And the to-participle makes excellent sense as
the possessive counterpart of a "root noun" with empty t-extension,
as Vedic -kr.-t- 'making -' => kr.tá- 'made': what "a making one"
has is what he has "made". I have made a case of the subjunctive
being in origin exactly the same, but that is a suggestion ratyher
than a description. The idea was that the subjunctive was originally
the form of dependent-clause verbs, and as dependent clauses
characterise main clauses just as adjectives characterise nouns, the
subjunctive was the mood of ancillary messages belonging to the
central message. That would of course make the subjunctive very old,
but I think that would have to be assumed anyway.
Jens