Re: -s- and verbs

> Back to linguistics:
>
> This means that a suffix that changes a stative or durative
> verb to make it denote something punctual, will by that same
> act make it denote something punctual in the past *or* in the
> future.
>
> Which means that the -s- of the s-aorist might be identical to
> the Baltic future in -s-, if we define the primary function of
> that suffix as that of making the verb denote something punctual
> (we might have to give up the link to the desiderative, though).
>
> What do you guys think?
>
> Torsten
>
> ***
>
> I wrote some months ago that I believed the earliest function of

-*s as it occurs in what later were interpreted as -*s-aorists was to
impart singularity.

>
> This has been my position for some 15+ years:
>
> With -*s, a _lexical_ durative is made into a new _lexical_

punctual verb.

Wow, we agree on something ;-)

> Tense was not a characteristic of earliest PIE.

You probably mean that verbs were not inflected for tense.


If future *-s and aorist *-s is the same suffix, it must be
significant that in Hittite and Tocharian it is confined to
the 3sg. (in the ind.) and in Baltic the whole future seem
to be built by adding endings to the 3sg,

bú:siu, bú:si, bùs, bú:sime, bú:site

in short, the -s is in auslaut in 3sg. One gets the impression
from that isolation that it was some kind of impersonal.
The Latin future is

faxo:, faxis, faxit, faximus, faxitis, faxunt (vel. sím. ;-)

With a little imagination, Latin might once have had a sole 3sg.
*fax, cf fa:s "it is permitted", if interpreted as "it has been
revealed", ie. that statement once arrived from "the other side",
it suddenly became present, apparent.

*bhw-ak-s -> fax, *bhw-ak -> *bhwax + *-s -> fa:s (*-ak -> *-ax
is the factitive suffix)



Torsten