--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> For the moment at least I prefer Jens's
> explanation: the entire category of "subjunctive" was lost in
Anatolian,
> and since the bHárati-stems were still subjunctives at that point
(as
> they are, for the most part, in Tocharian!), they were lost together
> with the whole lot.
I really must pass on the credit to Jochem Schindler. This is one of
the things I remember quite distinctly. He had another one: "What
comes out of IE initial *r- in Hittite? It is lost along with the rest
of the word." This was said with a plain face followed by a big grin
after a pause. What he meant was that initial r- was not tolerated and
the words containing it were abolished, i.e. replaced by synonyms. I
was never told what examples he had in mind, and I never remembered to
ask anyone who might have known.
As for the abolition of the subjunctive structure, I believe that has
quite a good chance of being correct. What has convinced me is the
strange fact that it is not only the thematic stem formation of the
verbs concerned that is missing, the particular verbs do not in fact
occur in *any* form. If the thematic inflection of *bher-, *H2eg^-,
*weg^h-, *pekW-, *dhegWh-, *leg^-, *seg^h-, etc. was just a
morphological innovation which Anatolian did not share, then one would
expect the verbs to show whatever stem-formation they had before they
took on thematic shape. But the verbs just are not there. Since the
verbal roots involved apparently are as old as anything in IE, there
remains only the explanation that they have been abolished. But why
would speakers suddenly cease to tolerate verbs that had presents of
the structure *bhér-e-ti, *ség^h-e-ti, etc.? Well, if forms like *H1és-
e-ti, *gWhén-e-ti, *H1éy-e-ti, i.e. subjunctives, were beginning to be
felt as bad and foul language, and opinions became very strong, then,
to be on the safe side, some may just have avoided the *CéC-e/o-
structure altogether. My own imagination goes as far as using the
subjunctive as a shibboleth in a process of ethnic cleansing. If I had
a Hittite army riding into my region I would certainly go easy on
signals of being special. I do not know it *was* that way, but there
is room for it.
The Tocharian paucity of thematic presents is in my opinion different
from this. As I see it, it was the usual fate of pre-Tocharian aorist
subjunctives to become present indicatives, and Tocharian repeated the
process with the subjunctive of the new aorist (s-aorist) which
yielded the se/o-present. The small number of thematic presents in
Tocharian represents then, I submit, the tenacious core presents that
would not yield, the last ones to survive, not the first ones to be
made.
Under these views, both Anatolian and Tocharian are derivable from IE
as we know it without any serious problems. For other reasons, the two
branches may still be the first ones to split away from the common
trunk, but it is not shown right here.
Jens