Re: Transitive / Intransitive / Stative and Voice

On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Oct 2002 19:26:47 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
> <jer@...> wrote:
>
> >This has all been said before,
>
> May I ask by whom (except me)?

It is conneted with the names Paul Kretschmer (Objektive Konjugation im
Indogermanischen, Wien 1947) and Johann (or, Jean) Knobloch ("La voyelle
-e-/-o- serait-elle un indice d'objet indo-europeïen? Lingua 3, 1953,
407-20). It has been occasionally reopened by others, I would have to do
some very serious searching to get that right (wasn't Kronasser among
them?).

>
> >but where is the evidence that the thematic
> >conjugation was once transitive as opposed to an intransitive athematic
> >counterpart?
>
> Nowhere.
>
> >Would such evidence not be common knowledge by now if it were
> >really true?
>
> Not necessarily, of course.  Maybe we've been overlooking something.  Or
> there
> are other Tocharians and Hittites (unlikely, but still one never knows).
>
> >I suspect the "evidence" is only in the structural analysis
> >of some non-IE languages. The irrelevance should be evident.
> >
> >I guess the problem has been like this: Some languages mark the object
> >role in the transitive verbal forms. IE has a funny thematic vowel of
> >unclear function, what was it originally? Hey, couldn't it have been an
> >object marker? No, it could not, for we know what it was - it was a
> marker
> >of syntactic subordination ("subjunctive").
>
> It certainly was.  The question is whether all thematic verbs are old
> subjunctives.  Can the tudáti-type be explained as a subjunctive?  It
> doesn't
> look like one, accent-wise.

That's right, and nobody would claim a subjunctive origin for the tud ti
type. There are two views on the particulars which both depart from the
weak forms of an athematic conjugation:

EITHER it represents a backformation from ambiguous forms like Skt. 3pl
tud nti, which was reanalyzed from *tud- nti to *tud- -nti. That has to
live with the problem that the two did not rhyme in PIE which had athem.
*-enti vs. them. *-o-nti. Still, that did not keep Latin and Slavic from
forming sunt and soNtU, so it is not a compelling counterargument.

OR it is based on the middle voice whise original 3sg form ended in *-eï.
With the ppropagation of the person-marking consonants of the active into
the middle, this was quite likely to produce *-e-t and to be taken as the
pivotal form of an inflection with *-o-m, *-e-s etc. to go with it.

I suppose both explanations are true for individual cases. The whole type
is commonly assumed to be an innovation with no deep roots in the IE
verbal system. I side with tradition here.

Jens