Re: PIE -*C-presents

> >In other words, this 3rd sg aorist is a nominal form of the verb.
> >
> >The 3sg s-aorist in its original endingless form has the following
> >characteristics: e-grade, vr.ddhi, s-suffix. In other words,
> >morphologically it behaves as if it were a deverbal root noun in
> >the nom., with Szerémenyi-lengthening. Semantically, the best I can
> >come up with is that the subject must have been in the dative,
> >something
> >like: 'To-him, (there-exists-a) deed', for "he did".
>
> The Sanskrit passive aorist is rather a different beast than
> the s-aorist. For starters, it is passive.

Yes, but what I was considering (but it wasn't too clear) was some
kind of 'mana kartam' "by-me (is) done" construction, in which the
last word is a *passive* participle, later re-constructed with the
nominative, and congruent person-and-number endings slapped on to the
original 3sg form.

> It is also restricted to the third person.

And according to Burrows and Jasanoff, so was the s-aorist, which was
the line of readoning I tried to carry on.

> Burrows may be right that
> it's in origin a nominal formation (neuter i-stems with
> o-grade), because that is indeed what the forms look like.
> The s-aorist forms (even in the third person) don't look
> much like masculine root nouns in the nominative at all.

> Root nouns rarely have e(:)-grade,

But if deverbal root nouns occurred partly free, with e-grade, and
partly bound in compounds with their verbal object, with o-grade, the
e/o-distribution caused by the position as tonic and posttonic vowel,
respectively, then, if such original root nouns were used in preterite
constructions, as I implied, they would invariably have e-grade in
that function, and, to avoid confusion, the o-grade would have become
the mark of its non-verbal use, ie as a noun proper. Now we have an
explanation for that phenomenon.

> and they always lose nominative *-s after a resonant.

Awesome. Now we have an origin for root aorists too.

> Furthermore, the *-s in
> the 3pl. is added to the verbal plural morpheme *-en >
> *-(e)r, not to any nominal plural. If the precursor of the
> s-aorist was ever a nominal form, it had already become a
> purely verbal form by the time of PIE.

And that might be exactly why it was being mechanically applied to the
plural by analogy of the singular?


Torsten