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
______________

OK, thanks, I think I understand now.  I take it that the aorist middle formation wid-é would be identical in formation to the present middle formation of a non-punctual root athematic verb (forgive me if I use incorrect or imprecise terminology, maybe you can correct me).  I tend to forget about verbs being inherently punctual in meaning and therefore having forms whose endings correspond to the present tense endings of durative verbs, but because the verb is punctual, will have aorist meaning.  So I guess *weid- would have been a punctual verb (which makes sense, mostly we report that we saw something rather than that we are seeing something, assuming that the similar meaning "look at" does not arise, which is often durative), which you probably took for granted that I would understand.  But I still find it a bit surprising that there seem to be no actual attested aorist middle formations with zero grade - unless imperfect formations like <áduha> evolved into an aorist tense (is such a thing possible?)?  Anyway, you have provided all the answers I need and I thank you for that.  But why is the possibility of an independent IE aorist formation with thematic vowel and zero grade completely rejected?

Andrew