--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
> Note in Hill
> http://www.indogermanistik.lmu.de/VrddhiKonj.pdf
> on vr.ddhi derivations
> "
> wie uridg.*h3nóbh- ~ *h3n.bh-´ 'Nabel'
> -> uridg. *h3énbh-e/o- 'Nabelgegend'
> so uridg. Inj.-Ind. *h1és- ~ *h1s-´
> -> uridg. Konj. *h1és-e/o-
> "
>
> in other words, the nominal and verbal stems receive the
> same suffix. [...]
I have given this a lot of thought. I now think I may have got it:
The subjunctive is marked by the addition of the thematic vowel *-e-
/-o- (or perhaps *-H1e-/-H1o-). By a general rule, the accent
advances every time a syllabic element is added and so is constantly
on the last underlying vowel. Now, derivatives with the thematic
vowel may be accompanied by vrddhi, i.e. an additional vowel mora in
the first segment of the word, and it appears that the subjunctive
did indeed have vrddhi.
I am myself the author of this theory, which had been adopted by
others, most notably Hill, while I had come to seriously doubt the
validity of the idea. Now I can turn around.
If the vrddhi lengthening is all that happens, we should in fact get
what we have. Then the subjunctive to go with *gWhén-t 'kills/
killed' should be **gWhe:n-é-t, whence by rules we know already
comprising pretonic shortening and initial accent, the IE output
*gWhén-e-t. It is now observed that if the root vowel was long
already, the vrddhi lengthening operated vacuously, so the
subjunctive to go with *sté:w-t is simply **ste:w-é-t, whence *stéw-
e-t (Ved. stávat), and the sbj. of an s-aorist *wé:g^h-s- has the
shape *wég^h-s-e-t (Ved. váks.at). The vowel of reduplications shows
no gradation, so I would guess that the vrddhi procedure did not
apply to reduplicated strucures.
As for the function I will still suppose that the subjunctive was a
form of belonging, the subjunctive being largely simply a "dependent
mood".
Jens