PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario

[Vidhyanath Rao]

"Carol F. Justus" <cjustus at mail.utexas.edu> wrote:

> The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
> preterite-presents like Gothic wait, witum corresponding to Greek
> oi~da, i'dmen. The original vowel alternation within a single verb
> paradigm would seem to be that between the singular and plural
> as in Gothic wait, witum. In Hittite this vowel alternation is
> exemplified by verbs like kuenzi, kunnanzi 'strike' or eszi, asanzi
> 'be' (full grade, zero grade) where the third person plural is zero
> grade as opposed to other full grade persons. Hittite does not
> have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
> not originally.

Firstly, from grammaticalization theory point of view, deriving Germanic
peterite-presents from PIE perfect is unremarkable: RV and Greek suggest
that the perfect originally had a resultative meaning (for RV, Macdonell
and Renou say that this was still the main meaning). Now resultatives
can develop into a perfect as in English by losing the idea of the state
being present or, by losing the component of event that produced the
result, can come to denote a present state. It can also happen that one
happens with some verbs and the other with other verbs. Both Vedic
(veda, da:dha:ra, di:dha:ya, ...) and Greek have examples where the
perfect implies only a present state (and so must be translated by a
present). [And in RV, whether the perfect is translated by a present
perfect or a present depends on context.] On the other hand perfect can
evolve into a (perfective) past as in modern French or German. Bybee et
al, ``The evolution of grammar'', give enough examples of these that it
should not surprise us. [Bybee et al suggest evolution from a
resultative as the solution for the preterite-presents of Germanic,
apparently unaware that this is the traditional explanation.]

Turning now to the vowel grade: The traditional reconstruction is that
the e/zero alternation was in the root present/aorist while the o/zero
alternation was in the perfect [for those who do not assume that
reduplication was obligatory.] Hittite would seem to support the idea
that e-grade in singular present/aorist is old. I don't understand how
this can be used to claim that e-grade in the present in Germanic is an
innovation. The question is just about the vowel grade in the perfect
singular, or looking at it differently, whether the same root could both
have a present and a perfect. Germanic preterite-presents are not enough to
deny that.

The only thing that remains is the relation to the hi-conjugation of
Hittite: Two avenues are possible here: We can argue, as Szeremneyi
does, that this is a purely Hittite innovation starting from the PIE
perfect. Or the traditional PIE perfect may have been a resultative
built using a stative formation, in which case reduplication and/or the
o-grade may have been to give a specifically resultative meaning. [If
so, then it is o-grade that is new, not the e-grade in the present.] I
am not sure that we have conclusive evidence for one over the other.
Anyway, I remain skeptical of zero past vs marked non-past, and so
of -ha being past of stative. Anyway, it is hard to see how past stative can evolve into a resultative (which refers to >present<
state).

[Perhaps I should explain the terminology a bit: A stative simply says
that a state exists, while a resultative says that a state exists due to
a past event. ``This branch is bent'' is statitive while ``this branch
has become bent'' is resultative.]