Re: Questions about Jasanoff

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> I'm reading Jasanoff's "Hittite and the IE Verb". Couple of
> questions:
>
> (1)
> On p. 3, it's said that "the clearest instance of such an
> aorist-based mi-verb is te:- 'to say' (pres. 3. sg. te:zzi =
> Lyc. tadi 'puts'), the Hittite reflex of the PIE root aorist
> *dhéh1-m [etc.] 'put'."
>
> What is clear about it? The verb is conjugated:
> temi tarweni tenun
> tesi tarteni tet! teten!
> tezzi taranzi tet terer teddu! tarandu!
> ptc. tarant-, iterative tarsike-/taraske-,
>
> and there is another verb, meaning 'to put', which goes:
>
> tehhi tiyaweni tehhun daiwen
> daiti tai(s)teni daista daisten
> da:i tianzi dais dair.
>
> LIV also derives the r-less forms of temi from *dheh1-, while
> the rest is derived from *ter-. Why should I believe that?

What makes you averse to it? There does not seem to be any rule
causing an alternation between full-grade te- + C and ter- + vowel
and zero-grade tar-, which is what the set descriptively amounts to.
So the easy way out is suppletion, not an unknown thing in verbs of
speaking. The aorist of *dheH1- could still be seen in that sense in
French il fit.

> (2)
> On p. 32, Jasanoff says that the 1pl. pf. ending is -ma:
> (more often than -ma) in the Rgve:da. How come -ma: isn't
> mentioned in Macdonell?

Not by any fault of Jasanoff's. It is mentioned in a short paragraph
in the Vedic Grammar (§68).

Jens