Root aorists vs. marked presents

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen jer at cphling.dk
Wed Sep 1 10:59:53 UTC 1999


On Sun, 29 Aug 1999, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

[...]
> In general outline, and using the Vendler classification, the argument
> is that root presents refer to activities and root aorists to
> achievements. [Of course, only Indic and Hittite matter for root
> presents. The picture is also clouded by polymorphism, especially as
> this is rather frequent in Vedic. One bone of contention between Jens
> and me is whether this polymorphism is primary or secondary. If the stem
> formants were derivational, I have a hard time understanding why
> polymorphism cannot be original].
[...]

Dear Nath and List,

I agree that the stem formants are originally derivational, so
polymorphism was original. But original does not necessarily mean PIE, it
may apply to times much older than that. By the time of the protolanguage
it appears that most verbs had lexicalized one particular present-stem
formation and one particular aorist formation for any given verb. I do not
exclude the survival of separate derivative sets from the same root or
even the existence of competing synonymous present or aorist formations
with the same verb, but I do not like the general principle to be simply
"anything goes", for it is truly impressive how much falls into place in a
very neat way if we insist on rigor here too.
   Incidentally, I cannot accept the statement, "Of course, only Indic
and Hittite matter for root presents", for Hittite does not distinguish
present and aorist stems, while some of the other groups do: We know from
Greek, as from Indic, that *H1ei-mi is indeed a present, while Hitt.
u-iz-zi 'comes' could in principle be an analogical formation made to a
root aorist, had the question not been decided by the other branches.
Thus, I am not at all sure that *<gwh>e'n-t (Ved. ipf. a'-han, Hitt. prt.
kuent) was the injunctive of a present stem and not that of an aorist. If
Anatolian cannot show such things, and Indo-Iranian shows occasional
shifts from one aspect stem to the other (e.g., Ved. de'hmi, le'hmi using
the original aorist stem), then *<gwh>en(H)- could probably easily have
been an aorist, as its drastic meaning of achievement may seem to imply.
But this is just a thought on a detail.

Jens



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