Re: [tied] Thematic root aorist

On 2006-07-18 18:09, Andrew Jarrette wrote:

> Yes, thanks for elaborating, but my question is: is <duhé> "gives
> milk" an aorist form? It sounds like it has present meaning (and I
> said that I had been able to find zero grade in athematic presents,
> but not in athematic aorists).

Yes, but you said you found only examples of zero-grade middles in -té;
<duhé, duhré> are t-less middles with accent shift, like the postulated
aorist middle *wid-é. Formally, there's absolutely no difference between
root present and root aorist stems, which justifies my use of *dHeugH-;
the aspectual difference is just semantic.

> Also, you say the aorist middle *ávida > <ávidat>, but I thought
> <ávidat> was an active form

Secondarily active, but historically derived from a middle. As "seeing"
isn't much of an activity, the functional shift towards the active is
easy. Cf. Lat. media tantum like <sequor> with middle inflections and
active meanings. You had a very similar discussion with Jens Rasmusssen
about a year ago. How abour re-reading that thread now?

> (wouldn't the middle have been
> *<ávidata>, like the aorist middle <ásicata>?).

Note that the Skt. root <duh-> forms the (t-less) imperfect middle
<áduha>, with the extended variant <áduhat>, which has an analogical
active ending despite the middle meaning of the form. This is precisely
what must have happened to *ávida. It was extended with a final *t (3sg.
marker), and was perhaps still interpreted as a middle, but it
eventually acquired an active function.

> I'm starting to
> wonder whether I misunderstood what you originally said. Perhaps you
> were saying that *wid-é was a present middle formation. But I know
> that we were talking about the origin of the _aorist_ forms <ávidat>,
> etc., so it was natural for me to infer that you were presenting
> *wid-é as an aorist middle form, not present. Which did you mean?

Originally, the aorist active was *weid-t. The middle of that was
*wid-é. Eventually, the ending of the middle was mistaken for the
thematic vowel and new personal endings were attached to it, yielding
analogical forms like *wid-é-t, *wid-ó-nt. Those new forms were
reinterpreted as active verbs and so replaced the old aorist active.

Piotr