Re: [tied] Fw: Subjunctive

On 2006-12-30 23:22, Patrick Ryan wrote:

> Are you asserting that the aorist is the PIE expression of the
> perfective aspect?
>
> And that the present expresses the imperfective aspect?
>
> If so, I find that completely unjustified!

Unjustified on what grounds? What I'm asserting isn't a mere private
opinion but the received interpretation of the category "aorist" in PIE,
so you'd better support your extraordinary claim with extraordinarily
good arguments ;-)

> Why correct me? There are unreduplicated perfects which, it may be
> assumed, preceded reduplicated perfects.

Is it something that may be "assumed"? The _only_ perfect that was
certainly unreduplicated in the common ancestor of (non-Anatolian) IE is
*woid-/*wid-.

> Some very fine linguists have had different ideas regarding the
> meaning of the subjunctive.
>
> What leads you to believe they were wrong?

Surely not the _PIE_ subjunctive. I don't know of any historical
linguists, especially "fine" ones, whose views about the meaning of the
PIE moods should be significantly different from what I wrote. Perhaps
you are thinking of verb moods labelled "subjunctive" in other
languages, but we've been talking about PIE, haven't we?

Piotr