Re: [tied] Revisiting the thematic aorist

On 2006-11-23 19:12, Andrew Jarrette wrote:

> A while back Piotr Gasiorowski informed us of his theory of the Sanskrit
> thematic aorist with zero grade (type <avidat>) having evolved from
> older subjunctive forms. When I asked him whether this Sanskrit aorist
> information could not have been an independent original aorist
> formation, having nothing to do with the subjunctive, he said that no
> other languages provided evidence of its formation.
> Now that I have learned some Greek grammar, however, I find the exact
> same formation in the Greek "strong" aorist, of the type <elipon>,
> aorist to <leipo:>, with many other examples. So can Piotr or anyone
> please explain why he said that there is no other evidence of this
> zero-grade thematic aorist anywhere? It seems to me that since the same
> formation is found in both Greek and Sanskrit, it must be an original IE
> formation type! Comments, anyone?

Well, the original proposal was that it was an original IE formation
type precisely because it occurred in both Vedic and Greek (and
sometimes elsewhere). However, we very rarely find _the same_ thematic
aorist in more than one branch. The number of defensible examples is
just one or two (*h1ludH-é/ó-, *wid-é/ó-), and all other known thematic
aorists seem to have been secondarily thematised (and to represent
original athematic aorist subjunctives). So even the small residue once
thought to be reconstructible for PIE may actually be the product of
accidental convergence.

Piotr