Re: [tied] -i, -u

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 02:16:20 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard
Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:

>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.

Of course. The injunctive is another possibility, which I
hadn't thought of.

>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.

However, as I said, the Novgorodian material shows a slight
predominance of forms without -tI before -e, as opposed to
before -i. This is more marked in modern Ukrainian and
Belorussian, where classes I (*-e-), II (*-ne-), III (*-je-)
have zero ending in the 3sg., while the i-stems (class IV)
and the athematic verbs have -t' (c.q. -c'), e.g. nese,
xvali-t', ïs-t' / njase, xvali-c', es-c'). This
distribution I think fits the indicative / subjunctive model
better than the indicative / injunctive. Even if the
i-stems are in origin partially thematic [causatives /
iteratives in *-eje-].

>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.

I don't follow? I was arguing for an IE subjunctive as the
origin of the forms in -0 ~ -tU (that is, -e ~ -etU).

In any case, the injunctive has been duly noted as another
plausible possibility.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...