From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 54008
Date: 2008-02-22
>My point was that it's a much more recent formation (as also
>> >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 thatRoot aorists do not have e:-grade.
>> 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 inI don't understand.
>> 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?