From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 40214
Date: 2005-09-21
----- Original Message -----
From: "nathrao" <nathrao@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 1:01 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic
vowel
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Rob" <magwich78@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "nathrao" <nathrao@...> wrote:
> The marker is the "past tense" -ed ending. "Carried" seems to imply
> punctuality; "carries/is carrying" do not.
So what is 'punctuality'? Does it mean some interval of time
(could be years in extent) conceived of as a blob, or does it
mean 'a very short duration of time'?
***
Patrick:
My opinion is that the length of the duration is secondary to the idea with
"progressive", something happens during the time; and with
"non-progressive", something happens before the time or after the time. For
"non-progressive", tThe duration, however long, is regarded as if it were a
point during which nothing _can_ happen.
***
>
> > This gets even harder when PIE supposedly used iterative of
> > 'take a step' to say 'walk', or the iterative of 'take a sip' to
> > say 'drink'. How did they say 'I walked home' or 'He drank the
> > whole pot of mead'?
>
> Probably through derived aorists, since iteratives are by nature
> durative.
What was the form of this derived aorist in PIE? I thought that
you had just root and sigmatic forms.
***
Patrick:
Those two forms are the only ones needed to describe a point for an
inherently durative verbal idea (-*s) or a point for an inherently punctual
verbal idea (*Ø).
***
> You're talking about the augmentless "past tense" forms, right? I
> agree with Sihler in that there is nothing inherently past-tense
> about them; on the surface, they are simply unmarked for anything
> besides person and number. I say "on the surface" because these
> forms tend to have zero-grade of the root (e.g. Gk. _lípon_ vs.
> _élipon_), which means they must have been accented on the ultimate
> syllable. So the Greek forms cited came from IE *likWóm and *?é
> likWóm, respectively. Furthermore, IIRC these forms are usually not
> sentence- or clause-final, so we can safely say that they are in the
> subjunctive mood. I take this as evidence for IE to have had the
> following ancient rules governing its verbs:
'elipon' type is supposed to be secondary, a replacement for the
root aorist. root aorist and root 'imperfects' are indistinguishable
morphologically, with difference claimed to be soley due to
whether 'true present' (to be interpreted as progressive, as no
known language combines progressives and states, with habitual
and generic left out of that group) is semantically possible.
In Vedic both the augmented and augmentless thematic aorists
occur as main verbs. I am not sure about Homer. How do we decide
(without getting into a vicious circle) as to which is original?
>
> 1. There was only one finite (or, at least, indicative) verb per
> sentence or independent clause.
> 2. Any verb in a dependent clause was in a non-finite (or, at least,
> irrealis) form.
>
> These rules are extremely common in left-branching/head-final
> languages. One that immediately springs to mind is Japanese, where
> the main verb is generally sentence-final and any other verb is in
> a "conjunct form" employing the ending _-te_.
Some of the universals asserted for left-branching languages
turned out to be areal (limited Eurasian left-branching l.),
rather than be true universals. I am not sure about the above
claim.
Nath
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