The status of the *-i of the primary endings and that of the suffix
> *-ye/o- of the durative aspect ("present-stem") marker is of course
> not the same, and I can see no point in identifying them
> etymologically. Their functions are not the same either: The *-ye/o-
> is also present in the imperfect, which does not have present-tense
> meaning; conversely, the *-i is never present in the imperfect
> despite its durative meaning. Therefore, *-ye/o- is durative, and *-
> i is present-tense, and the two should be kept as distinct as all
> good IE-ists do.
>
I proposed this some time ago, but no one has shot it down to my
satisfaction:
The *-i of the primary endings is not a hic-et-nunc particle, but just
a hic particle, ie. it is the locative case ending. That's because
what we think of as finite verbs in the secondary endings are actually
verbal nouns; the secondary endings *-m, *-s, *-t are 'at me', 'there'
(< *so), 'there' (< *to), respectively (now we know why the two last
ones are somtimes confused. The subordinate clauses, in which the
secondary endings appear, are therefore non-finite clauses with verbal
nouns (cf. Finno-Ugric languages).
Dutch has an odd habit:
'Ik ben aan het lesen' "I am a-reading" (< "I am on reading"), but
'Ik ben een boek aan het lesen', lit. "I am a book on reading"), "I am
reading a book".
Why does it collect all the verbal component that way, even though
it's formally a prepositional phrase?
Two explanations:
1) Spanish influence?
2) More interesting: the previous IE language had a progressive
construction which was still felt to be preposition (*-t-i
"in his V-ing"), which as a substrate influenced the Dutch
Sprachgefühl.
Torsten