Momentary-Durative

[petegray]

>>> Strunk has shown that nasal presents go with root aorists,

Can you give us a reference please, Jens?   I would like to question this,
for the following reasons:
(a) In Greek it is largely true, but there are exceptions;   so a bald
statement would need qualification.
(b) In Latin it is largely untrue, since the aorists are either sigmatic or
the rare reduplicative  aorist (tango tetigi, claimed by some as an aorist
on the basis of Homer tetago:n, or the lengthened vowel: pango pe:gi (~
perfect pepigi).   I can only find cumbo cubui which supports the claim in
Latin.
(c) In Sanskrit there is a variety of possible presents and possible
aorists.   There are 29 roots listed by Whitney which take nasal presents
(ignoring the class nine presents).  Of these the first retains its nasal in
the aorist, the second has no aorist, the third shows non-nasal present
forms, and has either reduplicated or sigmatic aorist, and so on .....
through the list.
(d) As stated earlier, a root may show nasal and non-nasal presents in
different languages and even in the same language.

So as a bald statement I find it unbelievable.   The evidence doesn't seem
to be there.    I would like to see what Strunk actually says.

> If my observation that there is an alliance between the sk^-present type
> and the s-aorist is correct,

Both forms may be used for some other reason, for example phonetic.   In
both Greek and Latin the sk- ending occurs only after a vowel, which then
takes a sigmatic aorist for purely phonetic reasons.

>> This brings me to a general question. There seem to be two camps about the
>> category system of the PIE verb. One believes that the aorist-imperfect
>> distinction, to be equated to perfective-imperfective distinction,
>> ``always'' existed in PIE and Hittie lost this distinction, while Vedic
>> changed things around. The other considers the aspectual distinction to
>> postdate the separation of Anatolian.

> [Jens] There are these two camps, yes, and I am in no doubt that camp one is
> right. There is no way the specific forms of the aspect stems could have
> been formed secondarily in "the rest of IE" left after the exodus of (or
> from) the Anatolians. At the very least, all the _forms_ must be assigned
> to a protolanguage from which also Anatolian is descended.

I thoroughly agree with you here, Jens.   The forms are scattered over most
of the IE languages.

> And what would
> the forms be there for, if the functions that go with them only developed
> later?

Here I disagree.   There can be variety of form in a language without a
difference in meaning.   Look at German plurals (or English for that
matter).   Sometimes a difference of meaning will emerge, fixing one meaning
on one form and the other on the other (German Woerter and Worte, Dinger and
Dinge), but this does not mean that all variations must necessarily
correspond to a difference in function.    Language simply doesn't work that
way, and there are far too many counter-examples for that claim to stand.

Counter examples in English:
(a) strong versus weak past tenses, e.g. dived ~ dove (origin historical /
analogical)
(b) plural /s/ versus plural /z/ (origin phonetic)
(c) gentive versus preposition e.g. Tom's ~ of Tom (basis stylistic)
(d) Time expressions (believe it or not, 10:45 really is the same as a
quarter to eleven)
and so on.

I see the development of a functional difference as a later phenomenon, and
I see it emerging differently in Sansksrit and Greek and Latin.  I suspect
that some scholars are temporarily misled by the use of Greek names for the
Sanskrit verbal system.

Peter