Momentary-Durative

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, petegray wrote:

> Jens said:

>>    I wonder how else anybody would understand these data - except by
>> ignoring their being just that.

> Alas, Jens, I do not see data, but hypothesis and ideology.   The data is
> that some IE langs use nasal presents for a particular root where others do
> not, so your evidence from Latin cannot count for much in Sanskrit.    The
> data is that root aorists are associated with a variety of present
> formations, including nasal infixes.

I resent the use of the word "ideology"; is the common occurrence of a
nasal-infix structure from *tewd- 'thrust' in Skt. tundate and Lat. tundo
not part of our "data"? Do I have to add that the impression that the
Indo-European languages are related and descended from a common source is
not based on ideology, but on inspection and common-sense interpretation
of the data. And it takes outright rejection of the relationship between
the IE languages to make evidence from one IE language irrelevant in
another. There are so many instances of the _same_ verbal root turning up
with a nasal present in IE branches that have nothing else in common than
the mere fact that they are accepted as Indo-European. Is it a coincidence
that *k^lew- 'hear' forms a nasal present in Indo-Iranian and Celtic?
*telH2- 'endure', in Tocharian, Armenian, Italic and Celtic? *g^neH3-
'know', in Indo-Iranian and Germanic? This could go on - as Strunk's book
(and indeed already Brugmann's Grundriss) does. Does that not indicate
that the assigment of the nasal-infix structure as the present of certain
roots was fully lexicalized in the protolanguage?

> The hypothesis which has become an ideology, is that all root aorists must
> have had a nasal present.

Oh no, it works only in the direction that a nasal present has a root
aorist beside it in practically all cases. Also the reduplicated presents
and the y-presents generally form root aorists. I suppose there were some
old distinctions that only made sense with durative actions. However, by
PIE, each verb had mostly picked one form for its present. The massive
concord among the IE languages in this respect can be explained in no
other way that I can think of - while the even greater discord is easily
explained by continued normal language change.

For example, you said:

>> Strunk has shown that nasal
>> presents go with root aorists, thus we would like to derive tuda'ti from
>> an original root aorist if that is in any way possible.

> I see no reason to, since I do not share your ideology.   You may or may not
> be right - the important thing is that what you offer is not data, and so
> you should not insult those of us who do not agree with it.

Hey, hey, how can it be an insult to anybody that I try to account for the
greates amount of correspondences between the IE languages with the least
amount of force? I do not see you offering any understanding of the data
you apparently do not want me to talk about; I point out that they fit a
well-argued theory that is already on the market, and I add that the same
theory also accomodates the data you did choose to talk about; if that
is offensive, I'm afraid I may soon be doing it again.

> You said:

>> Likewise we would like to have a root aorist beside the nasal present
>> vinda'ti ... and so we
>> have a strong motivation to derive the thematic aorist a'vidat from a root
>> aorist.

> Traditionally, these are taken from different roots.

"Different roots"? But there is only one underived verbal paradigm, and
that is as trivial as nasal-infix present + root aorist if *(e-)wid-e/o-
is explained in exactly the same way as the Greek thematic reflexes of IE
root aorists (the e-lipon type). That there is a perfect beside it,
is normal; that it means 'know' rather than 'have caught sight of' is a
case-story of the most usual kind. The stem *wid-eH1- 'be looking' is a
derivative stem which can in principle be made from all verbs. There is no
need to project the Indic distinction between vid- 'know' and vid- 'find'
back into the protolangue, the functional range is delivered free of
charge by the large IE verbal system already.

Jens