Re: [tied] Re: i-verbs in Baltic and Slavic

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 44665
Date: 2006-05-23

On Tue, 23 May 2006 11:01:32 +0000, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> That leaves the infinitive, where, despite the wildly
>> different (i~ vs. a~) development in the present forms,
>> Slavic and Baltic show remarkable agreement down to the
>> (acute) intonation: Slavic -i"ti, Lith. -ýti. Where can
>> this acute come from? There are a few possibilities in
>> Slavic, but the Lithuanian form can, or so I think, only be
>> explained as *-iH- (certainly not *-ei- or *-eiH-).
>
>But what do you make of the verbal adjective *-i-to- (Lat. monitus,
>etc., Ved. -itá-), which strongly suggests that the (short) *i belongs
>to the base of the causative-iterative (and is independent of the
>present-forming *-je/o-)?

I would have preferred Lat. *-i:tus and Vedic *-i:ta-, but
in neither language is the *-i-tó- suffix exclusively bound
to the causative-iteratives. In Latin (where any short
vowel in this position would yield -i-), we find -itus in
a:-stems (domitus), e:-stems ("essive-fientives") (tacitus),
etc.

In Vedic, the -i- is often inserted, sometimes with
etymological justification (set.-roots, where the -i- is a
vocalized laryngeal), sometimes also without (after
consonant clusters). The remarkable thing about the Vedic
forms is that the causative morpheme -ay- is deleted (and
replaced by -itá-), something wich also happens in the
passive (bha:j-áya- "cause to share" => bha:j-yá-te: "is
caused to share"), but nowhere else. It seems to me that
the deletion of -áya- in the passive is haplological an
presumably recent. There are of course a few possibilties
to choose from:

plain *-ey(h1)e- as in the personal forms:
*bhog-ey(h1)e-h1yé-toi => bha:jaya(:)yáte: ~> bha:jyáte:

athematic *-ey(H)-:
*bhog-eyh1-h1yé-toi => bha:jayi(:)yáte: ~> bha:jyáte:

zero-grade *-iH-:
*bhog-ih1-h1yé-toi => bha:ji:yáte: ~> bha:jyáte:

your proposed *-i-:
*bhog-i-h1yé-toi => bha:ji:yáte: ~> bha:jyáte:

I think the haplology is best explained by the first form.

Whether a similar explanation can also hold for the
participle in -(i)tós, I don't know. I also don't know how
far the H-deleting force of the o-infix goes. Jens?

On the other hand, the Vedic causative future does seem to
support my thesis. Here, the -áya- is reduced to -ay- and
the future morpheme always appears as -is.yá- (not -syá-),
so <va:sayis.yá-> "will make wear" as if from
*wos-ey&1-syé/ó-.

>If we forget about BSl. for a moment,
>something like *monéi-je/o- (rather than the handbook form
>*mon-éje/o-, into which it was eventually contracted)

*-éije- (from *-éih1-e) would suit me just fine.

>seems to be the
>original shape of the present stem. One would accordingly expect a
>BSl. infinitive like **-i-té(:)i, which of course doesn't exist, but
>the lengthening and the acute intonation may be analogical (after
>*-eh1-, *-ah2- as verb suffixes).

See my reply to Mate.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...