[tied] Re: Kabardian antipassives

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "petegray" <petegray@...> wrote:

> > Also, the meaning of the
> > perfect is not so much completion as having an enduring effect.
>
> This is partly true of Greek, but are we right to read it back into

PIE?

> Even in Greek the "resultative perfect", showing the result of an

action

> continuing up to the present, is not found as early as Homer (see

Szemerenyi

> p293). We do find very early the perfect used for actions which

continue

> in their subject, which is closer to a stative, or an antipassive.

A large

> number of Homeric perfects indicate attitude or mood, and they

describe the

> subject, not the object (e.g.: is ablaze,is astir,is undone, fits,

has as a

> share, etc). Verbs which are transitive in later Greek are often
> intransitive as perfects in Homer. (See Monro's Homeric Grammar,

p31).

>
> The perfect in Skt is one of three past tenses which at times are

not to be

> distinguished, and when they are distinguished, even scholars fight

over the

> difference. In Latin the completion is a stronger element than the
> enduring effect. (Remember Cicero's one-word speech, "vixerunt",

meaning

> "their lives are over."; and Vergil's fuit Ilium = Troy is no

more) In

> Germanic it appears, in strong verbs, simply as the simple past.
>
> The meaning of the perfect in PIE is hard to establish. It appears

to be a

> highly marked form of the verb, which may have connections in form

to the

> middle, and connections in meaning to a stative. But it does seem

to

> describe the subject, not the object.
>
> Peter

Probably something similar also exists in Etruscan, if /zivas/
= "life is over" (i.e. "he/her/they died"). A thorny topic.
Probably some light could be shed on it by /...fler zivas.../
found in Liber Linteus, less ambiguous than other attestation.

Marco