--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "aquila_grande"
<aquila_grande@...> wrote:
>
> If the endings called stative endings (hi.comj, perf-end.) in this
> thread really was marking some stative aspect or property, the hi-
> conjugation in Anatolian should statistically contain more verbs
> denoting a state than the mi-conjugation.
>
> Can enyone tell if this is so?
>
> If not, I doubt that these endings really was used to denote the
> subject of states in the first place.
There is no particularly salient preponderance of any functional
category in the hi-conjugation. There is on the other hand an almost
complete concentration of verbs with the vocalism *-o- or what looks
like it. The hi-conjugation is very clearly the way verbs with the
vocalism *-o- have come to be inflected in this language. There are
some exceptions, but that will be the case with any repartition
which is based on a secondary analogy. The reason why verbs with o-
vocalism used the perfect endings in their preterite is rather
obvious: the perfect had *-o-. The ablaut pattern -a-/-e- displayed
by most of the hi-verbs does not have to stem from the perfect, but
can also come from any of the o-types that took on this inflection.
A good candidate is the intensive, but the perfect itself is in my
estimation not far behind.
This tells us nothing about the original function of the perfect and
its endings.
Jens