Re: [tied] -i, -u

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> []
> The Old Novgorodian beech-bark inscriptions have both -tI
> and -0 (-tU appears only late in the 14th. century, probably
> under Russian/Muscovian influence). Zaliznjak says (p.
> 119):
>
> "We can see some statistical correlation between the choice
> of endings with or without -tI and the type of sentence: the
> highest percentage of examples without -tI is found in
> phrases that express a condition (introduced by a special
> conditional conjunction or simply by the conjunction <a>);
> it's also high in supplementary (pridatochnyj) dependent
> clauses as well as in intentional (celevoj) and explanatory
> (iz'jasnitel'nyj) ones; meanwhile in main or simple clauses
> the share of examples with -tI and without -tI is roughly
> the same."
>
> This can be explained if -tI contines the old present
> indicative *-(e)ti, while -0 (-e) continues the old
> subjunctive *-et (there is another correlation between
> endings without -tI and conjugation class: the zero endings
> are more common in the thematic class).
>
> The variation between -0 and -tU is comparable to the
> variation between <ja> and <jazU> "I". Both *-t and *-g^ (>
> -z) remained unaltered in Slavic until very late (in
> contrast with other final consonants, which were dropped
> early on, *-d even before Winter's Law). We therefore had
> *jaz "I" and *beret "(that/if) he carries". When the
> open-syllable rule finally imposed itself, such final
> consonants were either dropped (ja, bere) or acquired a
> prosthetic -U (jazU, beretU), or both. The old indicative
> *bereti remains as beretI.

Thank you for this clear and interesting presentation. As for the
interpretation, however, I do not think the opposition ind. : sbj. is such
a good choice. The functional description rather reminds one of the
relation between the indicative and the injunctive, and so of course does
the formal relation: The injunctive was unmarked (secondary endings)
while the indicative had a marking (primary endings). The 3sg indicative
of the thematic present indicative ended in *-eti, while the corresponding
injunctive was *-et; the Slavic reflexes of these would be precisely -etI
vs. -e. This has the advantage of using the same stem for the two moods
as the ind. and the inj. do, while the sbj. always has some stem
alteration. Whatever ulterior motives there are for the choice of an IE
subjunctive as the origin of the form in -etI do not seem to be well
supported by this.

Jens