From: aquila_grande
Message: 45513
Date: 2006-07-25
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen <elme@>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- 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 don't get it. A whole class of verbs occurred only in
> the subjunctive??
>
>
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> I think you mean an anti-Hittite army, if the effect would
> be to change the Hittite language? ;-)
> Also the two opposing parties would have to speak languages
> so similar that they were able to distinguish subjunctives
> in the speech of the other party. Which event was that?
>
>
> > 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.
> >
>
>
> Let me try to rephrase, in order to understand.
>
> PIE split into three groups:
> 1. Hittite
> 2. Tocharian
> 3. 'neo-IE'
> In group 3. there exists a group of verbal roots which
> are inflected according to a special paradigm, the
> thematic paradigm. They are not found in group 1. or
> group 2.
>
> OK?
>
> From this, the collected linguistic wisdom concludes
> that this group of verbal roots existed in PIE.
>
> Huh? I don't get it.
>
> The justification you give here is that they look just
> as old as anything else in IE.
> No they don't. *ag^- contains an /a/, for instance.
> And they are all prominent members of Bomhard's and
> anyone else's attempted Nostractic root collection,
> which makes me suspicious. If the language families
> that survived to this day in our part of the are all
> descended from languages of a tribe who 'got it', when
> the various neolithic tecnological revolutions passed
> by them, then there almost has to be a package of roots
> for designating items of that technology loaned into the
> founder languages of those surviving language families,
> and I believe *bher- (< *bhar-), *ag^-, *weg^- (< *wag^-)
> etc were such roots.
>
> Similarly, group 3 has roots starting in *r-, Hittite
> doesn't. Therefore PIE had roots in *r-??
>
> I'd say no.
>
>
> Torsten
>