Momentary-Durative

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Tue, 22 Jun 1999, petegray wrote:

> Jens said:

> > [In Sanskrit] zero-grade thematic verbs have the same
> > history as the thematic aorists ... [etc, deriving them from a long chain
> of reformulations:  middle > middle +t > (reinterpreted as active) >
> (extension by analogy to all other persons) > (reinterpreted as imperfect) >
> (re-creation of a new present).]

> Apart from the superficial implausibility of all this, and the fact that
> other aorists were not reformulated as imperfects, and did not create new
> present tenses, where is your evidence?

> Peter

Dear Peter and colleagues,

I do not think the chain of reformulations is longer than many other
stories generally accepted (or even as long as some known to be true). For
the type _tuda'ti_, the key example itself has apparently replaced a nasal
present still seen in tundate and Lat. tundo. Strunk has shown that nasal
presents go with root aorists, thus we would like to derive tuda'ti from
an original root aorist if that is in any way possible. And of course it
is. Likewise we would like to have a root aorist beside the nasal present
vinda'ti (Avest. vinasti shows the older unthematicized form), and so we
have a strong motivation to derive the thematic aorist a'vidat from a root
aorist. Now, the only difference between the structures tud-a- and vid-a-
is that the former is synchronically a present stem while the latter is an
aorist. I see little difficulty in a change from "aorist _atudan_" to
"imperfect _atudan_". If "turn" can come to mean "become", why can't
"strike one time" come to mean "strike in the situation at hand" which is
a much smaller change?
   A parallel change has apparently occurred in Ved. de'hmi 'form, knead'
and le'hmi 'lick' which, in view of the nasal presents seen in e.g. Lat.
fingo, lingo, also look like old aorist stems. That should be no great
surprise, for the functional change is quite small: it only takes the use
of the aorist form as an imperfect, then the rest follows by itself.
   I wonder how else anybody would understand these data - except by
ignoring their being just that.

Jens