[tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic vo

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

> Rob:
> > The perfect reduplication seems more linked to the
> > other form of durative reduplication, [...]
>
> The perfect and durative are two different aspects.
> The durative is _ongoing_; the perfect is a _state_
> reached by an action. I don't see any connection
> at all aside from the superficial connection with
> reduplication.

I shouldn't have called it the "perfect" -- better "stative". It
seems to me that reduplication was not originally part of
the "stative conjugation" -- after all, its endings alone could
distinguish it from the "active conjugation". The fact that we have
e-grade prefix and o-grade root in the stative seems to suggest that
the reduplication pattern was formed during the period of distinctive
pitch accent. However, it also seems that the stative conjugation
was being incorporated into the nascent tense system before the end
of IE proper.

> I'd say that the e-grade reduplicated duratives
> are simply taken from the perfect reduplication
> by later analogy. The original form before Schwa
> Diffusion would be *C&CéC- and seperate from a
> perfect in *CeCáC-.

Verbal reduplication suggests iterativity. It is not hard to go
from, say, "runs (and) runs" to "runs around". Reduplication can
also imply habituality, I think. This meaning seems more appropriate
for the stative itself. Basically, what I'm saying is that
reduplication became aligned with the stative conjugation once it
began to be reinterpreted as a perfect(ive) aspect.

> > I wonder if, in fact, the sigmatic aorist qualifies
> > as a "root extension".
>
> That's basically what I'm saying, but unlike the
> extension in *-g- which would come recently from a
> particle, the sigmatic ending would always have been
> a suffix of some sort, inherited from Proto-Steppe.

Yes, I agree. There are sigmatic verbal affixes found in Uralic and
Altaic that seem to have aspectual meanings.

> In my theory, we'd never see **bar-sa-mi because
> the theme is strictly *-as- in MIE. So we'd find 1ps
> *ber-as-am which is *bHe:rsm after Syncope. That's
> all we'd see from this because the stem is *ber-as-
> and not **ber-asa-. It makes a difference because
> of QAR.

In either case, syncope would reduce the form to *bars-.

- Rob