Renfrew's Celtic Scenario

[Stanley Friesen]

At 08:50 PM 3/2/00 +0000, petegray wrote:

>>Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE features
>> -- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.

>This is a chicken and egg situation.   The present, aorist and perfect *as
>tenses* are read back into PIE from Greek and I-I alone.   We cannot
>therefore say whether they are "retained archiasms" or "shared innovations".

>The various formations - s suffix, reduplication, secondary endings etc etc
>are scattered all over PIE, but those tenses as part of a tense system are
>only in those two language groups.

However the non-present forms in Latin and Germanic (at least) are
obviously heterogeneous in origin, on purely internal grounds.  This lends
support to a model postulating originally separate tenses a la Greek and I-I.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com