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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Rob" <magwich78@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "nathrao" <nathrao@...> wrote:
> > --- 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'?
>
> The former, I think. It means that the action, however long or short
> it took, is over, and is considered as a whole (a single "point", in
> effect).

Then why was there a difference between 'took a step' and
'walked home'?

>
> > > > 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.
>
> The sigmatic form is derived; that is what I meant.

That would seem to mean for 'inherently punctual' verbs, root aorist
was used with the 'original' meaning, but sigmatic aorist turned
it into an accomplishment verb. So, there was a difference
between 'a point' and 'a blob' of time.

I can't believe both points of view for the same language.

>
> > > 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.
>
> Well, what do you think would cause it to replace the root aorist?

In Sanskrit, it is a lot easier to conjugate thematics :-^)

More seriously, languages show a tendency to prefer longer
words when sound changes start to chip away the words. Especially
when the sound changes act on final consonant clusters, as it
happened in the pre/early history of many IE languages.

And there is the fact that we don't find many roots forming
thematic aorists simultaneously in many langauges.

>
> > 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?
>
> The behavior of the augment shows that it was still a preverb in IE:
> in Greek prefixed verbs, the augment is between the prefix and the
> verb root/stem. So I would say that the augmentless forms are more
> original.

But then it must have been capable of serving as the main verb.

Nath