On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 19:55:35 +0000, elmeras2000
<
jer@...> wrote:
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> The concept of
>> the s-aorist as a relatively recent innovation, spreading
>> from a central area but never reaching peripheral languages
>> like Anatolian, Tocharian, Germanic or Armenian (which does
>> have a *sk^e-aorist) has been voiced by many.
>
>It is true the s-aorist spreads, and thus many of its examples are
>innovations. But the inference that it is entirely an innovation and
>did not exist at all in the protolanguage does not follow from that.
It obviously must have come from _something_.
>It is apparently a widespread belief. But it is like saying that the
>object cannot have been in the accusative in PIE because that is the
>productive system and therefore must be an innovation. Some things
>just live longer than others. I see no basis for the assumption that
>the sigmatic aorist was not of PIE date. On the contrary I see a
>good many indications that it has existed earlier in the branches
>that do not show it too willingly, and also that some of its
>morphology has been processed by phonetic changes which cannot well
>be assumed to have operated after the split-up of the family.
>
>I do not *know* that the -s of the Hittite 3sg preterite of the hi-
>conjugation has been taken from the s-aorist, but it seems the
>easiest guess if it is phonetically possible at all. If it cannot be
>from *-s-t it may show that the 3sg of the s-aorist just ended in *-
>s in PIE already (whether from earlier **-s-t or not), but that
>would not change much. Even if it has a totally different source it
>still does not follow that the rest of the hi-conjugation is not
>based on the perfect.
>
>I also think that the productivity of the s-aorist would make it
>*more* probable that the unexpected -s in the closest match of the
>perfect does come from that source. It would mean that some of that
>productivity belonged to PIE already.
>
>
>> What I see (and apparently Cowgill had the same thought
>> before me) is a more interesting pattern than just 3sg. *-s.
>> I also see 3pl. *-(e)r-s.
>
>I fail to see the basis. I am not sure I understand the perspective
>either: is it meant to reflect 3sg **-t : **-t-i vs. 3pl **-ent : **-
>ent-i with word-final change **-t > *-s and **-nt > *-r?
No. It reflects 3rd. person *-s.
I haven't made my mind up where it comes from. The first
thought is to connect it to the Uralic possessive and verbal
definite endings *-m&, *-t&, *-sa, which are quite plainly
agglutinated personal pronouns. I don't think there can be
any doubt that the PIE endings *-m, *-s have the same
source, even if the exact course of events can be disputed
(my view is that *-m and *-s [in fact *-mW and *-sW] reflect
agglutinated *mu and *tu, where the second is the PIE 2nd.
person pronoun, the first the basis for the oblique of the
1st. person pronoun [but the nom. has been replaced by
*h1eg^]).
If we have *m(w)e and *twe, then *swe, the 3rd. person
reflexive, can reflect the development of a former 3rd.
person pronoun *su. Its agglutination would lead directly
to a 3rd. person marker *-s (*-sW). Note, however, that the
Uralic and PIE forms cannot have a shared origin as
_endings_: the 3 plural is *-sa-n in Uralic, it is *-en >
*-er + *-s = *-ers (> *-r.s, *-é:r) in PIE. The order of
the elements is inverted, and the *-s can only have been
agglutinated in IE _after_ final *-n became *-r.
The other option is that *-s is the agglutinated nominative
of the demonstrative pronoun *so. If one thinks that the
3rd. person ending *-t represents the oblique base of the
same pronoun (*to), the two endings *-s and *-t share a
common origin. The reason why the 3rd. person subject of
one set of forms (the present/imperfect) was marked by
(non-nominative) *-t, while the other was marked by
(nominative) *-s must remain obscure. It may have been the
case that *-s marked a transitive subject, while *-t marked
an intransitive subject, which would open a view on a stage
where pre-PIE had ergative morphology. In any case, the
ending *-t (plural *-en + *-t) was generalized in
imperfective forms, with the suffix agglutinated before the
soundlaw *-n > *-r, while perfective (aorist) forms had *-s
(pl. *-en + *-s), agglutinated after the soundlaw *-n > *-r
(*-er-s) [after the shift to accusative morphology?].
The original zero ending of the third person was maintained
in some forms of the perfect (*-0-e; *-r-(e)) and the middle
(*-0-oi, *-0-or; *-r-oi, *-r-on, *-r-om).
As I explained in my other message about roots ending in
*-eH (or *-eC) and their relation to the s-aorist and the
ske-present, what I suspect happened was the ending *-s of
the (root) aorist forms was replaced by *-t of the present
system, to avoid the inconvenient homophony with 2sg. *-s (I
know the 3sg. is supposed to be more resistenmt to change,
but in this case there was no other option, as the 2sg. was
*-s everywhere). However, in a handful of roots of a
particular structure, the *-s- had come to be felt part of
the root. A clear example is *g^ne:h3-s-. In these verbs,
-s- became fixed in the aorist stem, extended to all
persons, and when a present stem was cretaed, that also
incorporated the -s- (*-s-k^é-). This is the proto
s-aorist. It is clearly present in Hittite (gane:szi
[mi-conjugation!]) and Tocharian (kñasäs.t [not a class III
preterite!]).
The other root aorists adopted a conjugation that was
otherwise indistinguishable from that of the imperfect: *-m,
*-s, *-t. In the plural, the two paradigms merged in a way
that has prevented an accurate reconstruction of the PIE
1/2pl. active verbal endings. I suspect the original
distribution was:
present-system: *-més(i), *-té, *-ént(i)
aorist-system: *-mén, *-tér, *-é:r,
but I would need to explain and argument that in a whole
separate message.
The stative (Anatolian hi-conjugation, PIE perfect, middle)
was originally tenseless. The past of the hi-conjugation
and the Tocharian class III preterites go back to an
innovative "stative aorist", where the stative endings were
partially replaced by aoristic ones, in any case in the 3rd.
person (*-s(-t), *-rs), in Hittite also in the 1/2 plural.
The Hitt. 1sg. -hun is generally regarded as analogical,
given -ha elsewhere in Anatolian (albeit as the general 1sg.
preterite ending for both mi- and hi-conjugations), but it
just occurred to me that the parallel Hitt. *-h2-m(W) > -hun
and Tocharian *-h2-m(W) + -a: > -wa: might alo be inherited.
I find no evidence for a 2sg. *-th2-s, however (unless Toch
-asta is metathesized).
Outside Anatolian and Tocharian, and no doubt aided by the
existence of the proto-s-aorist (the root aorists that had
retained -s- and extended it to all persons, like
g^ne:h3-s-), this stative aorist developed into the
Classical s-aorist. Whether the forms go back to a fully
mixed stative/aorist paradigm *-h2-m, *-th2-s, *-s-t, *-men,
*-ter, *-r.s or to a more purely stative *-h2e, *-th2e, *-s,
*-mHe(?), *-(t)He(?), *-rs, the stative endings were
eventually replaced by active ones, leading to a paradigm
*-m, *-s, *-st, and then to *-s-m, *-s-(s), *-s-t,
*-s-me(s/n), *-s-te, *-s-r.s (or *-s-n.t outside Vedic),
like the paradigm of g^ne:h3s-.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...