--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2008-02-19 15:07, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Or could it be the other way round, that the dental 'extension' is
> > part of the original root, and the 'extension-less' side form the
> > result of false division of 3sg pres. in *-ti (with various
> > assimilations of the dental)?
>
> Something similar may surely be suspected in cases like *pek^t- and
> *plek(^)t-. Both roots form sigmatic aorists, and the contrast between
> pres. *pek^te-ti and *pe:k^st (< *-k^t-s-t) may have led to the
> misanalysis of the present as *pek^-te-ti, with the "present sufix"
> *-te/o-. The evidently archaic derivative *(p)k^te:n 'comb' shows a *t
> which looks like an integral part of the root.
In Sanskrit both s-aorists and root aorists lose the endings *-s, *-t
of the 2 and 3sg, and the s-aorist further its -s. I like to imagine
that this was PIE and the rest of its descendants regularized it. A
PIE like that would explain these socalled 'dental extensions'.
Searching through Burrows 'The Sanskrit Language' I found this on the
origin of the s-aorist:
"
The s-aorist and the other forms of sigmatic aorist are sharply
distinguished from the other classes of aorist in that there are no
present-imperfect stems formed in the same way. There are indeed in
the Veda certain isolated forms of the present made in this way
(stus.é, his.e, kr.s.e) as well as some anomalous formations
containing s which cannot be referred to the s-aorist stem (1 arcase,
r.ñjase, 2 gr.n.i:sé, puni:sé) but these have the appearance of being
tentative formations which never developed very far rather than relics
of an earlier system.
The s-aorist is found in Greek (ézeuksa, édeiksa, etc.) and Slavonic
(ve^sU, sluchU, etc.). In Latin s-aorist forms have coalesced with
perfect forms to make one tense (perf. di:xi:, du:xi:, etc.). In
Irish injunctive and subjunctive forms of the s-aorist are retained
(the s-subjunctive). No trace of it appears in Germanic. Radical
vr.ddhi is attested for the vowel e by Latin and Slavonic (Lat.
ve:xi:, O. Sl. ve^sU : Skt. áva:ks.am from vah-); for roots in
diphthongs there is no clear evidence. In Hittite there is no s-aorist
any more than any other kind of aorist, but there are certain
preterite forms in the 2 and 3 singular which have final - : 2 sg.
da-a-a 'you took', tarna-a- 'you put in', da-i 'you placed', pa-i
'you gave' ; 3 sg. da-a-a 'he took', da-a-i 'he placed', ag-ga-a
'he died', etc. These forms consist of the verbal stem enlarged by the
suffix -s and have no personal ending proper, and beside them there
are forms to which the personal terminations have been secondarily
added: 2 sg. da-i-ta beside da-i, 3 sg. na-i-ta 'lead' beside
na-i-i. These forms are compared to the s-aorist of other IE
languages, but it seems unlikely that they are simply remains of a
fully developed IE s-aorist system. In the first place we have seen
reason to believe that the aorist in general has arisen by
specialisation out of an undifferentiated preterite, and in this
respect Hittite should represent an earlier state of affairs.
Furthermore there is some agreement between Hittite and Tocharian on
this point, since the latter language has also a certain type of
preterite using an s-stem in the 3 sg.: A. präkäs, B. preksa 'he
asked', and this coincidence does not seem to be fortuitous. Bearing
these considerations in mind we may perhaps rather explain the IE
s-aorist to be a post-Hittite formation based on the extension to the
whole paradigm of an s-suffix which was originally restricted to the
preterite of certain persons (notably the 3 sg.) of one class of verbs.
"
This seems to anticipate Jasanoff's idea that the s-aorist originates
in the 3sg, to which it is still limited in Tocharian and Hittite.
Torsten