--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G&P@...> wrote:
>
> Purely derivative, I'm afraid! I merely repeat what greater
scholars say.
> E.g. Lehmann: "These [perfect] endings correspond to those of
the -hi
> conjugation in Hittite."
Of course they do, but he does not address the question of priority
to one of the tenses. Actually, few have cared about this.
> Though I freely confess scholarly opinion varies to an extreme on
this
> point, e.g. Szemerényi:
> "The -hi conjugation is thus not inherited but a Hittite
innovation, which
> is not shared even with other Anatolian languages."
Did he really say that? Later in the book he says it's "an
innovation from the presentic perfect-middle with -ha, -tha, -e,
which under the influence of the mi-class became -hai, -thai, -ei
end finally -hi, -ti, -i" (Introd. 334, Einführung 1970:307,
1990:365). The word "presentic" just refers to his assessment of the
original meaning of the perfect, he clearly is talking about the
category we call perfect. So he only says that the present of the hi-
conjugation is the perfect with analogical present markers. A
critical reader misses an explanation of the extraordinary implicit
assumption that Hittite was able to dig up the IE perfect and
subject it to analogical refashioning if Anatolian had not retained
it. It has since become clear that the hi-conjugation is in fact
reflected in other branches of Anatolian than Hittite, so this is
not really an issue.
> >Do Sanskrit -a, Gk. -a resemble
> > Hitt. prs. -hi (older -he) more than they do Luvian prt. -ha? Do
> > Skt. -tha, Gk. -tha resemble Hitt. prs. -ti (older -te) better
than
> > they do Hitt. prt. -ta?
>
> This is a little disingenuous, Jens. We cannot simply compare
the existing
> forms. Rather we must compare what we can safely reconstruct,
namely the
> singular endings:
> *-ha< h2e, *-tha < -th2e, * -e
> and we must also allow that Hittite has remodelled the -hi
conjugation on
> the basis of the -mi conjugation. Hence we have:
> Hittite -hi < older -he ~ reconstructed *-he
> HIttite -t- < older -te ~ reconstructed *-the
> Hittite -i < older -e ~ reconstructed *-e
>
> That's convincing enough for me!
I don't follow. You also derive the hi-present from the endings of
the perfect with adjustment of their finals to the basis of other
presents. In many verbs the present forms are plainly made from past-
tense forms with analogical presentic -i, such as <tezzi> 'says'
which is an IE root aoorist, so that only its preterite <tet> can be
inherited. The same goes for <ganeszi> 'recognizes' which is based
on the prt. <ganest(a)> from the s-aorist *g^né:H3-s-t. Then, how do
you know that the basis of the present of the hi-conjugation was not
its preterite? What *does* the preterite of the hi-conjugation
reflect in your opinion?
Jens