On 2008-02-27 15:02, alexandru_mg3 wrote:
> Can you see how similar these constructions are in relation with
> (dHeh1-) of the Germanic dental preterit?
> Clearly indicate a Common Pattern (so a PIE one)
Common origin requires formal homology (the historical identity of
"substance", not function). If one language forms periphrastic verb
forms using forms of *kWer- or *h1es-, another using *dHeh1-, and still
another one using *kap-, this indicated convergent but independent
development, not common origin. Even those that use the same verb as an
auxiliary (there is a limited number words that commonly play this
function), they may do so in slightly different words.
Birds have wings and can fly, like birds, but that doesn't mean that the
common ancestor of birds and bats was a flier.
> "Suffice it to say that the weak verbs of Gothic correspond in many
> ways to derived verbs in other Indo-European languages.
Yes, typologically.
> IV. Regarding your Haplology Main ISSUE:
> ========================================
> "The singular forms of the weak preterite are somewhat odd in that
> they do no have reduplicated forms. Here it may be appropriate to
> invoke haplology at some early stage and say that for some unclear
> reason, it occurred in the singular, but much later in Gothic in the
> plural forms."
>
> And I quoted the above text only to highlight again 'your' Main ISSUE
> regarding the supposed Haplology (because your explanations were
> spreaded somehow on many sub-topics):
>
> "for some Unclear Reason, it occurred in the singular, but much later
> in Gothic in the plural forms" (SIC!)
I've no idea what you want to argue with this quote and with "SIC!".
Incidentally, the author is wrong. Gothic never dereduplicated the
plural endings; other Germanic languages did. And _you_ are wrong when
you say that Gothic reduplication occurs in the 3rd person pl. and
nowhere else. In fact, it occurs in all the persons in the plural _and_
in the dual. Even better than that: in the subjuntive mood we have
reduplicated <-ded-> also in the singular! It occurs _everywhere_ except
in the indicative singular, i.e. the most frequently used category and a
natural target for haplology, as any linguist will tell you (so the
reason clear enough).
Your idea of reduplication as expressing "plurality" is a non-starter.
Neither the dual nor the subjunctive (of all numbers) are associated
with any sort of plurality. If you believe that reduplication in the
present stem has to do with repeated or incomplete actions, I agree. But
it has the same function in the singular as well ("I am repeating an
action, you are repeating an action, she is repeating an action").
Of course PIE had some compound verbs with *-dHeh1- as the second
element. The showcase example is *k^red-dHeh1- 'trust' -- everybody
knows it. But they do not express a temporal meaning and have nothing in
common, genetically, with the Germanic dental preterite. In fact,
pre-Germanic did not need a complex past tense as long as it had the
inherited distiction between the present and the imperfect (originally
based on the same stem). Once the distinction was lost, and with it the
ability of secondary verbs to form a simple past tense, the old
preterite was replaced by a periphrastic construction. The story is very
familiar. Something like that happened at various times in almost all IE
languages (and in other families as well)