Re: [tied] -hi, -mi

> I think we should distiguish between verbal roots that are
> inherently stative (eg. 'stay') and those that are punctual
> (eg. 'change').

Yes, there is some evidence for that, and the idea has been around for some
time. It also applies to nouns, though the stock of word-pairs for which it
can be shown is depressingly low. So it is suggested that this is a very
early phenomenon, maybe even pre-PIE, from a time when the language might
have been ergative. It breaks down as the language changes to an
accusative-object structure.

> Now there are ways to turn stative-intransitive verbs into punctual
> ones: or punctual ones into
> stative-intransitive ones:

But can we show that this occurred in PIE? I think that's very difficult
to prove.

> But I think
> the idea implicit in the discusion was that semantically stative
> roots should follow the "stative" hi-conjugation (since the perfect
> make statives out of any root), and semantically punctual roots
> should follow the "punctual" mi-conjugation.

No. See below.

>But no sign of that has been found.

Quite right, because the difference is lexical, not morphological - that's
what you said in the first paragraph. The early root (perhaps) is stative
or active. A later development is the use of stative endings such as -eye/o
(cf all those Latin statives in -eo). The stative origin of the perfect
tense presumably belongs here too - so we shouldn't expect to see it only on
verbs which are lexically stative (or lexically active). We have to see it
arising after the pre-PIE system of lexical distinction has broken down.

Peter