Re: [tied] Stative Verbs, or Perfect Tense

On 05-03-05 13:28, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> If the original stative was *bhé-bhor-, that suggests that
> the o-grade of the root is either due to my
> "svarita-lengthening" or to "Szemerényi lengthening" in the
> 1sg. (*-h2), extended analogically to the other persons, cf.
> *h2ák^-mo:n, *h2ák^-mon-m.

I attribute the colour of the vowel to original lack of stress, not to
historically underlying length. The unstressed *o would normally have
been reduced _unless_ lengthened or analogically reinforced, but here it
was saved by the sufficiently early shift of stress in the clitic group.
It isn't different at all from the survival of the full vowel in the
last syllable of the endingless locative.

> Even assuming that the expected
> long vowel in the 1sg. (bhé-bho:r-(h2)-) was shortened
> analogically or after the addition of *-e, that still leaves
> problems (e.g. in my "svarita-lengthening" I would expect
> zero grade if the root ended in -CC (-RC)).

I take the nom.sg. of the reduplicated adjective (in isolation) to have
been animate *bHé-bHo:r, inanimate *bHé-bHr. --> *bHe-bHór when followed
by an enclitic.

> Another problem is that this presupposes reduplication in
> the stative, but the Hittite hi-conjugation (and isolated
> forms like *wóid-h2a) lacks it. How to explain the
> o/e-Ablaut in Hittite (or even outside Hittite: e.g. Lith.
> málti vs. Slav *melti)?

I was talking about the IE perfect only; _if_ the Hittite hi-conjugation
is of similar (denominal) origin, the kind of noun or adjective that
underlies it is different (but see Jens's comments). As to the lack of
reduplication in *woid-, it may be the unique example of a perfect stem
de-reduplicated already in PIE (e.g. because of its hight frequency of
use, which favoured irregular shortening, and its easily vocalisable
onset): *we-wóid- > *uwóid- > *woid-, or something similar. This of
course has been proposed by many people before.

Piotr