A question about Greek or Latin

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

On Sat, 17 Mar 2001 08:38:42 -0000, "petegray"
<petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

>> What would you say to the alternate alternate explanation that the
>> causative formant is merely an agglutinatated verb *[h1]ey-e-

>The suggestion that it might be causes me no problem;  the assertion that it
>is so would need proof.

>I'm happy with the idea that all suffixes began life as independent
>morphemes way back in early Ur-pre-proto-pre-PIE.  I think you mean more
>than that, so we would need to find firm evidence for:
>  (a) the existence of such a verb

<iyami> is the verb for "make, do" in Hittite (and Anatolian in
general).  Its existence outside Anatolian is doubtful (Toch. A ya- ~
ypa- "to make" probably does not belong here), but that would make
sense if the verb was grammaticalized elsewhere (PIE *-ei-e-
causative) except in Anatolian (where causatives are made with -nu-).

>  (b) the use of such a verb as a causative

It makes sense semantically.

>  (c) the acceptance of this explanation as better than any alternative.

A possibly good argument is the one I gave: the existence of causative
forms in *-p-ei-e- (with preverb *pe-?), which in Vedic occur in verbs
ending in -a:, such as dha:- "put" -> dha:paya "cause to put", jn~a:-
"to know" -> jn~apaya "cause to know", etc. and in the verbs ar-paya
"cause to go", ks.e:-paya- "cause to dwell", ja:-paya- " cause to
conquer", s'ra:-paya-, ro:-paya- "raise [cause to rise]".

>What about the "going" root Pokorny 296 *ei / *ia:  ?

Semantically difficult.  Athematic.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl