Minus quam perfectum

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Steve Gustafson" <stevegus at aye.net> wrote:

>"The type of perfect most characteristic of Latin, that in -vi, is not found
>elsewhere."

One can compare Skt. laryngeal verbs in -a:u, but also the
Tocharian B 1st p. sg. in -wa.  Albanian also has a category of
aorists with formant -v- (origin?).

>He does observe that it is probably ancient, in that it often exhibits a
>different ablaut grade from the present stem, giving -sero-, -se:vi-
>as his example.  He believes that it came originally from the aorist of *bhu,
>*bhuei > *fu(v)ei, and that this -vei spread by analogy to whole classes of
>vowel-stem verbs.

>As to the origin of the distinctive personal endings, Palmer says:

>1sg -i = the middle ending -e from Sanskrit and Slavonic, representing -ai
>or -Hai;

>2sg -isti = the element -is-, which Palmer thinks is the same ending you see
>in the -eram and -issem groups, + IE -tha, plus the -i from 1sg, > -is-thai >
>-isti

But cf. Tocharian B 2sg. -sta and the Hittite past forms (2 and
3sg) in -sta (besides -ta and -s).

>3sg. -it, with -t brought over from the primary inflections

>3pl -erunt again has this -is suffix, plus -unt > -ont from the primary.  He
>relates the archaic alternative -ere to the -r endings of the passive.

This, I agree with Beekes, is PIE *-e:r (cf. Skt., Hitt., Toch.)
with -i added.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam