PIE ablaut & Renfrew's Celtic Scenario

[petegray]

Thanks for your reply, Carol.   I think there are some points which are
either confusing or confused, and I hope you can clarify.

Carol said:

>The Germanic forms that clearly go back to an IE 'perfect' are the
>preterite-presents

(me:)

I disagree - it is not just the preterite-presents.    All the strong
perfects in classes 1 to 6 show exactly the same pattern as the oldest
perfects preserved in Greek and I-I, namely o grade singular, zero grade
plural.   Whereas Greek generalised the o grade for most verbs, I-I and
Germanic did not.

Carol said:

>Hittite does not have the e:o alternation, and Germanic too probably did
>not originally.

There is no e:o alternation in the perfect.  If were you meaning the e grade
presents, Germanic certainly has those.

Carol said:

>Bridget Drinka's study of the sigmatic aorist ...

There is no relic of the sigmatic aorist in Germanic.

Carol said:

>the -s- aorist is secondary (internally in Greek it is ...

It cannot be totally internal to Greek - there are traces of it from Celtic
through Latin etc round  to Baltic,and it is highly productive in I-I.   I
guess you mean that it is a later development at a stage when PIE was
already beginning to break up.  If that's the case, it seems irrelevant to
Germanic and I am no longer sure what you were trying to argue.

Carol said:

>the Latin verbal system [is] without productive e:o aspectual
>distinctions.  [this ]shows an archaism ...

Traces of the o grade perfects remain (e.g. the long u: perfects, mostly <
*-ou-), but even if they did not, it would be difficult to argue that Latin
showed an archaism here, rather than a generalisation of the plural zero
grade to the singular.   (The zero grade is widespread in Latin perfects,
and there is a e:zero present:perfect pattern.)   The word "productive"
might be misleading here too.   The only productive perfect in Latin, at the
time we know Latin, is the -v/u- form;  all the others are relics.

Carols said:

>The Germanic strong verb preterites ...  their singular-plural ablaut
>pattern ... is similar to the ... preterite-present pattern,

Do you mean that both have zero grade in the plural?

>the present e-grade forms may be just as innovating

The present e forms in Germanic are no more innovating - or just as much
innovating - as they are in all the other IE languages that show them.   I
guess you don't mean that they developed independently in all those IE
dialects - so what do you mean?   That they were a development at a later
stage of PIE?   Then you are not really saying anything about Germanic at
all.

Carol said:

>Greek eidomai, eido:  'see', back formed from old oida 'know' (internal
>Greek evidence argues that this form for Greek 'see' is new).

But again, not new within Greek, but developed while the PIE dialects were
in touch.   This verb occurs with the meaning "see" and a present in e grade
in Latin, Greek, Armenian, I-I.   Surprisingly for your argument, it does
not occur in Germanic!  So I am rather unclear what you are actually saying.

Peter