Re: Transitive / Intransitive / Stative and Voice

On Fri, 18 Oct 2002 14:57:01 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<jer@...> wrote:

>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?).

And I take it that like me, they came up with essentially no backing evidence,
except that it's a neat idea?

>> 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

I see, new computer... tudáti

>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.

tudánti *tud-ánti *tud-á-nti, I take it.

>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.

Sorry, I can't figure out if this is _meant_ to be *-eï or *-é (as in
indo-europeïen above).

>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.

Well, to be honest, as long as no (direct or indirect) evidence can be adduced
for a former transitive/definite function of the thematic conjugation, the
concept remains a nice idea but lacks further scientific interest. Even if the
neat idea is true, in the Platonic sense, I still need to explain thematic
intransitives (say, Skt. bhávati) as intruders from the subjunctive, so what's a
few more?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...