On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 18:46:31 +0200, Miguel Carrasquer
<
mcv@...> wrote:
>> I also fail to see the principle whereby the thematic vowel could be
>>used to mark the object. Otherwise it expresses belonging. That
>>incidentally makes some sense: If the bare endings were passive
>>("was killed"), the extension by a morpheme of belonging would be
>>possessive ("has killed"), which comes quite close.
>
>Yes, that would be another possibility, but it would have to
>be explained better, because I don't quite get the mechanism
>you're proposing.
Perhaps a parallel can be found in Basque, where the
morpheme -(e)n marks the subjunctive, the past tense, and
the verb of a relative phrase (as far as it isn't already
past/subjunctive).
This is of course not quite the same picture as PIE (verbal)
*-e/o-, but who knows whether the Basque preterite
originated in a perfect of sorts.
Basque also offers a kind of parallel for what I was
proposing: the ergative subject is usually expressed as a
set of suffixes on the verb (optionally followed by -(e)n),
and the absolutive object/subject as a set of prefixes.
Except in the transitive past tense with 3rd. person object:
there the ergative is expressed by prefixes similar to the
ones marking the absolutive.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...