>> 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?
Einfuehrung page 246, the end of section 9.2.4. Interesting that this
conflicts with a later statement in the same book!
>What *does* the preterite of the hi-conjugation
>reflect in your opinion?
I confess I hadn't thought enough about it. If the Hittite -hi forms do go
back to PIE, as I believe they do, then we must ask if those forms were
already past in PIE - and the evidence, as I interpret it, is that they were
not. They were tenseless, and time reference developed later, with each
language developing independently its past-of-the-perfect. This would
suggest, if other arguments are indecisive, that the same happened in
Hittite - the past is younger than the present. I accept, though, that this
is an argument from absence, and is not particularly strong.
Peter