Momentary-Durative

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

Dear Peter and List,

(- careful, this may be about Indo-European -)

I think we're getting some place. Specific and insisting questions based
in an open mind are the only way. Many could learn from this - and that
may be just the point, as we shall see:

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, petegray wrote:

[...]

> You said:
> [Jens:]
>> The impression that [in the IE verbal stem] ...
>> no common system is
>> recoverable is not compatible with current knowledge

> [Peter:]
> There is little real "Current knowledge" with PIE.   It is in many cases
> really rather "current opinion which someone happens to accept".   So how
> much support is there for Strunk?  How much debate is there?

[Jens:] There is a lot of unqualified debate on everything in IE studies,
even on points where the material speaks with a very clear voice. I'm not
sure any statements about IE could carry a majority vote. The reason is
obvious: IE studies is where most comparativists are, the field is vast,
and the amount of previous scholarship staggering. It is common to begin
your career by making mistakes simply because you cannot know all the
pertinent facts; many (most?) stay that way, contributing only to the
advancement of confusion. Therefore opinions should be checked very
carefully before they are adopted; one can only go by the quality of the
arguments put forward. Now, that _is_ what you are doing:

[Peter:]
>    I do question, however, how much weight we should give these
> patterns, and in particular whether we over-prioritise the patterns 
> based on Greek & Indo-Aryan.   It has been shown again and again since
> the 70's that the "south-eastern" group of Greek, I-A, and Armenian is
> highly innovative.

[Jens:] I'm not sure "shown" is the proper word, rather "maintained",
"guessed" or "wishfully thought" (if you can say that). It's one of those
numerous things about which two opinions are logically possible (_before_
you look at the specifics, mind you): Either Balto-Slavic is a unit or it
isn't, either the limited morphology of Hittite is a fossil or it isn't,
either *H2 colored *o or it didn't, etc. Not unpredictably, opinions tend
to sway from one possibility to the other all the time; if the market is
for one solution, it is arguing for the other one that is interesting.
Much debate in the field can be written off as acts of would-be scholars
searching for a place to stand with their names in neon signs. The
correspondences uniting Greek and Indo-Iranian are remarkable in a respect
that is constantly ignored by one "side", namely by their ability to turn
up in relics in all the other branches also. Now, innovations would not do
that, so that's not what they are. One is naturally reluctant to believe
that it is as simple as that and that so many researchers can be so
pitifully wrong, but only until one has looked at the decisive facts,
then one side is patently wrong and the other one much closer to the
truth.

> [Peter:]
> You said:

> [Jens:]
>> No, thematic presents and root-presents typically take the s-aorist (or
>> suppletion).

> [Peter:]
> Root presents are rare outside I-I, and in Sanskrit -s- aorists do not seem
> to be typical for root presents, since the both sigmatic and asigmatic
> aorists occur.   E.g. am has asigmatic, i:d has both, i:r shows both, u
> shows none, U:h asigmatic, and so on.   Where, again, is your evidence that
> makes it "typical" for a root present to take an -s- aorist?
>     Thematic presents appear to be a later formation, in any case, and you
> seem to suggest an origin for them in root aorist subjunctives.

[Jens:]
The two questions are related. First, thematic presents indeed appear to
be old subjunctives (more often aorist than present, but both occur). This
means that we can use the thematic present on a par with the root present.
Incidentally, I see no signs of being young about the thematic formation
as long as it is a subjunctive - quite the contrary: the thematic vowel
alternates in its own way, I don't see how that can be accounted for
unless by rules that have later ceased to operate. Second, if you take
Sanskrit from a Sanskrit grammar like Whitney's or a large dictionary like
Monier-Williams' you get an unsorted mixture of old and new forms, some so
young that they belong to a language that was nobody's native language
anymore. You must discount all the young forms of later periods, which is
best done by sticking to Vedic alone. Narten has of course discussed all
Vedic forms that look superficially like s-aorists, but since her work
does not contain a catalogue of conclusions (which are often not
decisive), it is hard to use for our purpose. On a more modest level, one
can look in Macdonell's Vedic Grammar under s-aorist ad is-aorist
(discounting with the latter forms without an extra vowel mora, since they
are just reinterpreted set root aorists), and then check in Macdonell's
Vedic Grammar for students to see what kind of present the root concern
forms. The result is overwhelmingly positive if the search is limited to
s-aorist forms that are not marked as belonging to post-RV texts):

I may have missed a few, but my somewhat hasty inspection reveals a root
present or a thematic present beside an s-aor. in the following 37 cases:

akra:n (krand) : kra'ndati
a'ks.a:r (ks.ar 'flow') : ks.a'rati
ks.es.at (ks.i 'dwell') : ks.e'ti
ga:si (1sgM ga: 'sing') : ga:'y-a-ti (!)
ga:ri:t (gr.: 'devour') : gira'ti
aca:ris.am (car") : ca'rati
acait (cit 'perceive') : ce'tati; cite'
ajais.am (ji) : ja'yati
ta:ri:t (tr.:) : ta'rati
atsa:r (tsar 'approach') : tsa'rati
adha:k (dah) : da'hati
a'diks.i (dis'), Av. da:is^, do:is^.i: - : Lat. di:co:, Goth. teihan
dhuks.ata (duh) : do'gdhi
adyaut (dyut) : dyo'tate
nes.ati (nais.t.a, ni:) : na'yati
anu:s.i (nu:s.ata, nu:) : na'vati
a'bhutsi (budh) : b¢dhati
a'bhaks.i (bhaj) : bh jati
abha:rs.am (bhr.) : bha'rati
amatsur (mad) : ma'dati
aya:s (3sg aya:t., yaj) : y'ajati
aya:sam (ya: 'go') : ya:'ti
a'rabdha (rabh) : ra'bhate
a'ram.sta (ram) : ra'mate
ava:t (vas) : va'ste
ava:t. (vah) : va'hati
a'viks.ata (vis') : vis'a'ti
avr.tsata (vr.t) : va'rtati
asaks.ata (sac) : sa'cate (also root aor. with red.prs.)
asakta (saj) : s'ajati
asa:ks.i (sah) : sa'hate
asa:vi:t (su: 'impel') : suva'ti
asra:k (sr.j) : sr.ja'ti
astos.i (stu) : sta'uti
asya:n (syand) : sya'ndate
a'sva:r (svar) : sva'rati
a'ha:rs.am (hr.s.) : ha'rs.ate
(Forms with zero-grade + -ks.a- may be special innovations; that would
reduce the list by two.)

In 13 examples, commonplace renewal by the productive s-aorist can be
assumed. Root aorists are attested for the following for which, then, it
is no problem that they do not form root presents:

ata:n (tan): tano'ti, old aor. a'tan
da:si:t (das 'waste'): old aor. dasat (Narten)
naks.at (nas'): old root aor. a:'naks.am (prs. doubtful: length, red., y?)
apra:s (pra: 'fill'), old root aor. apra:t: n-prs. pr.n.a:'ti
muks.ata (muc), old root aor. a'mok : n-prs. mun'c'ati
a'yuks.a:ta:m (yuj), old root aor. yo'jam : n-prs. yuna'kti
a'ra:sata (ra:), also root aor. and red.prs.
a:'raik (ric), old root aor. riktha:'s, n-prs. rin.a'kti
avitsi (vid 'find') secondary: old root aor. a'vidat : n-prs. vinda'ti
asa:nis.am (san"), old root aor. a'sanat : n-prs. sano'ti
a'spa:rs.am (spr.), old root aor. a'spar : n-prs. spr.n.vate'
ahes.ata (hi), old root aor. a'hyan : n-prs. hino'ti
ahu:s.ata (hu:) : ha'vate (also root aor. + red.prs.)

A few combine s-aor. with sk-prs.:

a'pra:ks.am (pras') : pr.ccha'ti
yos.ati (yu) : yu'cchati (also root aor. : red.prs.)
a'ya:m.sam (yam) : ya'cchati
ava:t (vas 'shine') : uccha'ti

The residue is very small, perhaps as small as two examples:

mam.si (man): unclear relation to ma'nyate; manve' (with root aor.)
alipsata (lip) : n-prs. limpa'ti !!
aha:s (ha:) : red.pl. ja'ha:ti, ji'hi:te !!

So it's about two or three examples out of 57 that won't play ball! I do
not think that looks like random distribution?

> [Peter:]
> Incidentally, I read today in JIES vol12, 1984, the argument that even
> the -s- aorists are an innovation within Greek, I-A and closely related
> groups.   The article alleged that evidence outside this area is weak, and
> tried to dispose of Latin -s- perfects by suggesting they were either
> limited to verbs ending in a velar, or they were back formations from the
> supine.

[Jens:]
It's a popular view on the matter, and one of the favorite arguments for a
step-by-step model of development within the protolanguage, if I
understand it correctly (the whole idea is alien to my sense of logic).
For the s-aorist it is patently wrong. I have myself (in 1978) called
attention to the existence of Hitt. ganeszi 'recognizes' whose past
ganest(a) from *g^ne:H3-s-t is manifestly the s-aorist one expects beside
the sk-present (Lat. cogno:sco:, Gk. gigno:sko:, Lith. paz^iNstu, OPers.
xs^na:sa:tiy, Alb. njoh), and Jasanoff did the same independently (1987),
adding other branches (esp. the magnificent Armenian prs. c^anac^'em, aor.
caneay, the latter form from a stem *g^n.e:H3-s- with vocalization of the
/n/ pointing to an old monosyllable), and we presumably agree on the
prehistory of Germanic *kne:-(j)i/a- 'know' as based on the s-aorist, 3sg
*g^ne:H3-s-t, with simple replacement of the word-final cluster by
productive endings. The main point is here that the lengthened grade goes
back to a time when laryngeals had not yet colored adjacent e-vowels, for
the lengthened /e:/ turns up as /e:/ in the daughter languages, not as
/o:/, this proving the formation so old that there can be no talk of its
being a post-PIE innovation, no matter what weaknesses one may read into
specific parts of the material.

I hope this has been instructive.

Jens