On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 17:06:54 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard
Rasmussen <
jer@...> wrote:
>All Old Irish s-types inflect the same. The s-aorist used to have
>athematic forms, so it will seem that the sigmatic subjunctive and future
>adopted that inflection in the 2. and 3.sg., while in some of the other
>forms it was the reverse. I do not think it is unattractive that the
>sigmatic derivation of the a:-subjunctive makes it originally thematic.
But it's odd from the Old Irish standpoint. In the 3sg.,
the s-subjunctive has merged with the s-future (and the
s-preterite). I can't help but be reminded of the Old Irish
present, where the 3sg. (absolute) reflects the PIE ending
*-(e)t, and definitely _not_ *-(e)ti, while the 2sg.
reflects expected *-(e)si (> *-ei > -i: > -Y) and probably
not *-es. If I'm right about the Slavic 3sg., where I think
the subjunctive *-et gives -e ~ -etU and the indicative
*-eti gives -etI (the Old Novgorodian material shows an
alternation between -e and -etI which is consistent with
that interpretation), then perhaps such an alternation was
also present in Italo-Celtic (Latin 3sg. forms in -d < *-t
and -t < *-ti), and Old Irish would reflect the merger in
the 3sg. of indicative and subjunctive (the indicative
continues an originally subjunctive form). If the
a:-subjunctive is nothing but a phonologically altered form
of the s-subjunctive, I would expect the same merger of
athematic and thematic (indicative and subjunctive) forms in
the 3rd. person singular.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...