--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> I had wanted to ask you about your thoughts on the origin of
> the ê/i type in Balto-Slavic. Jasanoff says that your
> thoughts are (independently) similar to his: barytonic 3pl.
> -n.ti > -inti and then spread of -i- (Slav. i:-, after
> iterative/causatives) to the other persons. Jasanoff's
> brief account doesn't really convince me, maybe you can
> explain it better.
I have to make an addition to what I wrote in response to this. I
see now, re-reading Jasanoff's treatment at 1978:107-112 and
2003:158, that he actually operated with *-n.ti -> *-i-nti for the
nucleus of the stem-formation of the Balto-Slavic stative from the
beginning. I remember reading it in the old days and not being able
to make sense of it, probably because he wanted - and still wants -
a middle-voice form to have shaped the stem which I find unfounded.
I guess I lost my way in it all and later thought the very same
thing concerning the -i- (in our department journal in 1985, later
reprinted in a Szemerény festschrift of 1993), at the time conscious
only of Jasanoff's extra -i- for the explanation of the Lithuanian
future. It shall be a pleasant duty to put the record straight at
the first chance I get.
Jens