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

On Wed, 24 May 2006 08:20:38 +0000, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>There are e:-stems originally ending in *-C-[h1]-jé- (with original
>aorists in *-éh1-); here the expected verbal adjective, if inherited,
>would be *-C-&1-tó- > Lat. -C-itus, with the zero grade of the *-eh1-
>suffix. The majority derived from thematic bases have presents in
>*-e-h1-je- and verbal adjectives in *-e-h1-tó-, with Olsen-style
>preaspiration producing *-e-tHó- > Lat. -idus. I don't see any serious
>problems here.

I wasn't suggesting there were problems. I was merely
ponting out that -itus is not something we only see in
causative verbs.

>As for <domo:>, it's one of a small group of Latin verbs with only
>_partially_ generalised first-conjugation forms, like Lat. tonat,
>whose prototype is *(s)tonh2éje- (or even *(s)tonh2áje- with
>h2-colouring), cf. Ved. stanáyati. The regularly formed verbal
>adjective is therefore *(s)tonh2i-tó- (Lat. tonitus), and likewise for
>*domh2i-tó- > domitus (Ved. damáyati, damitá-). Note that in these
>cases the laryngeal isn't deleted despite the R-fix (and so blocks
>Brugmann's Law in the Indic forms), since it causes no syllabification
>problems in the original derivational base of the causative, the
>verbal noun *domh2o-. Nothing unexpected here. Original *-ah2-je-
>presents, of course, have participles in -a:tus.
>
>> 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-),
>
>Here of course I disagree. IMHO the /i/ of -itá- is precisely what is
>(and should be) left of the "causative morpheme" in this position.

I think Balto-Slavic -i"ti/-ýti and the Vedic future in
-ayi-s.yá- show that the causative morpheme, when athematic,
was *-(e)ih1-. The laryngeal was regularly suppressed in
the more common thematic forms (*-éyh1-e/o- > *-éy-e/o-), so
it wouldn't surprise me if a secondary zero-grade form /i/
was abstracted from that.

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