On 2006-12-29 21:53, tgpedersen wrote:
>> It's an aspect rather than a tense.
>
> No, perfective is an aspect rather than a tense. There is no aorist
> preterite, aorist present nor aorist future. The aorist is a punctual
> past.
In PIE grammar, aorist = perfective. It's just a question of traditional
terminology, not of any real difference between these terms. Note that
the PIE "present" is also an aspect (= imperfective). A "present" stem
with primary endings has a present-tense interpretation, but the same
stem with secondary meanings and the augment is a type of preterite (the
"imperfect").
The "aorist indicative" is used with the augment as a perfective
preterite. The aorist indicative doesn't take on primary endings because
these imply "present continuous" semantics. But this restriction doesn't
apply to the aorist subjunctive, which was used when speaking of
hypothetical or future events, including actions under preparation but
not fully realised (this what links the perfective subjunctive with the
imperfective present indicative). Needless to say, the aorist imperative
had no punctual past semantics either.
Finite verbs in PIE could be stripped of all tense specifications (the
primary-ending markers as well as the augment), forming so-called
injunctives, which were tenseless but not aspectless. Injunctives could
be used when speaking of timeless, general truths, or in prohibitions
(the aorist injunctive had a "preventive" value in such cases, cf. *méh1
gWem-s 'don't move!' = 'stay still!', while the present injunctive was
"inhibitive", cf. *méh1 gWHen-s 'stop striking!'). A couple of aorist
injunctives probably functioned like plain imperatives already in PIE:
*dHéh1-s 'put!' and *dóh3-s 'give!'
Piotr