From: Torsten
Message: 67287
Date: 2011-03-28
> > Anyway, here's my version.
> > PIE verb stems were originally also nominal (there might have been
> > nominalizing now lost suffix). To nominal elements, thus also to
> > verb stems, could be added the three deictic particles
> > PPIE
> > 'nu' "at me",
> > 'sa' "at thee" and
> > 'ta' "at him/her/it".
> > The latter, in PIE -tó-, gave the impersonal 3sg preterite. PIE
> > forms presents from that by adding either -i or -r, I suspect both
> > are the postposition *en, so that present forms are originally
> > participial, cf French 'en parlant ...', which by some creolizing
> > stage became finite, cf. those sub-standard Englishes which leave
> > out the copula in the progressive tenses, making -ing a finite
> > suffix.
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "G&P" <G.and.P@...> wrote:
>
> Tac. Germ. 46
> 'Peucinorum Venethorumque et Fennorum nationes Germanis an Sarmatis
> ascribam dubito'.
> "I am in doubt whether to ascribe the nations of Peucini, Veneti and
> Fenni to the Germani or to the Sarmatae".
>
> Torsten suggests: "The phrase before 'dubito' would traditionally be
> analyzed as a dependent clause serving as object of dubito; one
> could instead understand the finite (subjunctive 1sg pres.) verb
> form 'ascribam' as a finite, but inflected one (participle, 1sg
> pres.).
>
> I suspect Torsten may wish to reword that.
If the above can be reworded so that Pete understands it, Torsten will do that gladly.
Eg. PPIE
V-nu -> V-aN -> V-o:/V-am
V-sa -> V-s
V-ta -> V-t
generalized in the subjunctive from 1sg as
V-am
V-as
V-at
> It makes no sense,
It is true that without the quote from an earlier posting which Pete removed and Torsten has therefore reinserted, one could get the impression that what Torsten proposed was an analysis of the quoted Latin sentence and not of its PIE ancestor, and that would make very little sense.
> and perhaps he has not expressed his real meaning.
??? Now that sentence makes little sense to me. Why would anybody express something other than their real meaning on a linguistic topic?
> (And I can't work out what that would be.)
Well, Pete could ask me?
> The traditional interpretation of the Latin is unavoidable.
Yes it is, in the traditional framework of Latin. I was proposing that the construction of the sentence descended from a construction with an infinite form (similar to the Portuguese inflected infinitive) in PIE, not in Latin itself.
And BTW, why is it that every time I propose an alternative solution to a problem, someone assumes that proposal is a result of my presumed defective understanding of the traditional proposal?
Torsten