--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "whetex_lewx" <whetex_lewx@...>
wrote:
>
> Gir-s aorist is impossible in Lith. There is only gir-io'- (o with
> right stress).
It is unlikely that Kortlandt is so dumb as not to be aware of that.
He happens to be reconstructing earlier stages and given the fact
that Slavic has retained the s-aorist it is not overly adventurous to
assume they existed in earlier phases of Baltic. Quite the contrary,
Kortlandt is actually forced to assume that they existed because he
operates with a Balto-Slavic period, so that ideally the loss of the
s-aorist should actually be part of the reconstruction of the
prehistory of Baltic.
That is not to say that Kortlandt's reconstruction is correct or even
defensible (I've said earlier that I don't understand it and am not
in a position to evaluate it), but surely it can't be dismissed just
by stating that modern Lithuanian has no s-aorists.
Willem