On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 01:24:49 +0000, elmeras2000
<
jer@...> wrote:
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>[JER:]
>> >Sure, it was an *-s that lengthened the vowel
>> >of Hitt. hasterz 'star' from *H2sté:r (+ added -s),
>>
>> I fail to see the relevance. The -s in the Hittite word is
>> secondary (there's also haste:r "star"),
>
>I was making a concession, granting you that the *-e:- of IE
>*H2sté:r does reflect the working of an earlier nominative *-s
>(which has been restored in Hitt., a matter without relevance). But
>if you now say that ...
>
>> the /e:/ was long
>> to begin with, and stressed /e/ would have given /e:/ in any
>> case, whether -s followed or not, and whether it was
>> originally long or not.
>
>... then I do not see that you need an earlier *-s to get the Hitt.
>3pl.prt in -er. Aren't you saying that stress suffices?
Well, that's what Melchert says.
In any case, the Hittite form doesn't stand alone. If we
compare Hitt. -ir, -er with Latin -e:re, the ending can only
be reconstructed as *-e:r.
>[JER:]
>> >In Modern Greek the imperfect and aorist use the endings -a, -
>es, -e,
>> >-ame, -ate, -an. In this the 2/3 sg are thematic, while the rest
>have the
>> >-a- of the aorist. In Old Church Slavic the aorist has thematic
>endings in
>> >the 2/3 sg, as tec^e, tec^e 'ran, flowed', while the other
>persons are
>> >sigmatic, either 1sg têxU, pl. têxomU, têste, tês^eN, or 1sg
>tekoxU, pl
>> >tekoxomU, tekoste, tekos^eN. Here one could say: Where else do we
>find
>> >retention of an unmarked stem only in the 2/3 sg
>>
>> You know that's exact opposite of what I was saying.
>
>Is it? Wouldn't that be just as hard to ascribe to chance? Is the
>Greek-Slavic correspondence trivial and the Hittite-Tocharian one so
>dramatic that comparative grammar has to be recast in its honour? I
>am willing to accept anything if there is a good reason, but I have
>trouble seeing it here.
My probem is exactly the same. I fail do see a good reason
for the proposed Anatolian/Tocharian scenario.
There are no mysteries in the Greek case. Classical Greek
had a thematic imperfect -on, -es, -e, -omen, -ete, -on, and
an s-aorist -sa, -sas, -se, -samen, -sate, -san (k-perfect
-ka, -kas, -ke, -kamen, -kate, -kasi). The -a- comes from a
syllabic nasal (1sg. *-sm., 3pl. *-sn.t) c.q. from pf. 1sg.
*-h2a. In Modern Greek, the paradigms have been levelled at
the desinence level, but an s-aorist remains an s-aorist:
the -s- is still there (allright, there are now also
s-imperfects). The case is even clearer in Latin: the old
s-aorists adopted the desinences of the perfect (vix-i:,
vix-isti:, vix-it etc.), but they didn't lose the -s-.
The Slavic case is more complicated: disregarding the
secondary -ox- aorist, we have a mix of e-imperfect,
root-aorist, s-aorist and se-aorist: the 1st. sg.du.pl.
person has *-só- (but long grade root, as in the s-aorist),
the 2/3 persons have *-s- in the plural and dual, but in the
singular we have either imperfect (nése-) or root-aorist
(velê'-). A few athematic verbs have s-aorist in the 2/3sg
(by(stU), da(stU)). Some roots ending in a consonant have
the thematic non-sigmatic aorist (< root aorist/imperfect)
in all persons. Without going into more details, the
rationale seems to be a general confusion of the different
types of aorist (with the imperfect thrown in after the
creation of the characterized impf. in -êaxU), with a choice
being made in favour of those forms with the most open
syllables (to the point of creating the double thematic
-oxU-aorist), which follows from the "law of open
syllables".
For Hittite and Tocharian, I just don't see a rationale. I
don't really believe Jasanoff's account that the 3sg. of the
hi-past (and only the 3sg.) was replaced, nor do I believe
the more traditional versions that see the hi-past as a
perfect that adopted the 3sg. from the s-aorist. The 3rd.
person is usually the most resistant to change.
The version where the hi-past is an s-aorist that gradually
incorporated forms of the perfect is more credible. Still,
if -s- was already an aspect marker in PIE, it's strange
that it would have disappeared, except for phonetic reasons
(the Latin development, where perfect endings are added on
top of the -s- is more plausible, other things being equal).
Tell-tale archaisms (like Slavic dastU, bystU) seem to be
missing from the Hittite hi-past: the 2sg. (3sg.) ending
-sta (as if from s-aorist *-s + perfect *-th2a) is
_Neo-Hittite_ (so it must really be analyzed as mi-past 2sg.
-s plus hi-past -ta, c.q. 3sg. hi-past -s + 3sg. mi-past
-t(a)). In Tocharian, if the active and the middle both go
back to fully sigmatic forms, why was -s- preserved in the
middle and not in the active, outside the 3sg.? It's not as
if the Tocharian class III middles continue the s-aorist
middle in pristine form: for one thing, they have added
-a:-.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...