Re: [tied] Re: PIE Punctual and Durative

On 2006-12-31 12:14, tgpedersen wrote:

> There's a categorial difference. 'Aorist' is a noun and denotes a
> class of verb forms, 'perfective' is an adjective, and denotes a
> semantic property of certain classes of verb forms

So PIE aorists are perfective verb forms. Terminological hairsplitting
doesn't change the fact that not all aorist verb forms in PIE have
preterite reference, and that the aorist is an aspect rather than a tense.

>> 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.
>
> 'Stripped' is the wrong term. Cf. the English phrase 'point- and
> senseless'. This is best understood by remembering that the '-less'
> part was once an independent word, governing some case in 'point' and
> 'sense', instead of seeing it as a case of stripping the first noun of
> a suffix. In other words in a string of injunctives following an
> aorist indicative, the augment of the latter, when it was an
> independent word, governed the string of injunctives following it,
> much like a temporal adverb in a first sentence today will set the
> timeframe for the following sentences.

I don't mean "stripped" in the historical or derivational sense.
Actually the injunctive is the simplest, UNMARKED form of finite verbs.
This explains the typological oddity of the "primary" endings being
apparently marked with respect to the "secondary" ones. Actually, the
secondary endings were not preterite markers -- the augment was, but the
bare injunctive had no temporal reference.

>> 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!').
>
> Side remark: the distinction between affirmative and negative
> commands makes computer programming sense too.
>
>
>> A couple of aorist injunctives probably functioned like plain
>> imperatives already in PIE: *dHéh1-s 'put!' and *dóh3-s 'give!'
>
>
> Ah, nice, there's my subitive stem. Hittite pahsi "protect!" etc
> should then have been emendated by adding imperative *-ei/*-i (cf.
> Slavic) to that perceived stem. Shouldn't they have vr.ddhi, BTW?

No. *dHeh1-s has the 2sg. -s, which doesn't cause any lengthening anywhere.

Piotr