On 2006-05-24 10:31, Mate Kapović wrote:
> I didn't quite get you. Do you believe that causatives are originally just
> denominative verbs or that they were just derived from nouns (but with
> causative meaning)? Both sounds pretty strange to me...
More or less like this:
*légH-e/o- 'lie down'
begot *lógH-o- 'place for lying',
who begot *logH-éje/o- 'place down, lay' = 'cause to lie'
and
*bHér-e/o- 'carry'
begot *bHór-o- 'burden',
who begot *bHor-éje/o- (perh. originally with middle inflections when
interpreted as an iterative) 'burden (oneself) with' = 'cause (oneself)
to carry to and fro'.
The causative/iterative suffix is secondary, from the fossilisation of
*-(e)i-je/o-, where the first part is a restructured thematic vowel and
the second part is the present-forming *-je-.
As opposed to more recently formed denominatives, which keep their
accent on *-jé/ó-, these old verbs became specialised as
causatives/iteratives.
Piotr