The PIE verbal endings

The Proto-Indo-European verbal endings Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, August 2013 The active endings The singular active (athematic) endings and the corresponding 3pl. are uncontroversial (pace Tocharian -t in the 2sg): 1 2 3 3 past -m -s -t -ént present -mi -si -ti -énti The 1-2 pl. and the dual forms are more difficult. Hittite probably shows an ancient pattern: 1 du-pl 2 du-pl 3 du-pl past -wén *-tér *-ént present -wéni -téni *-énti > -énzi In the preterit, 2 pl. -ten was analogically restored after present -teni1. In the 3 pl. preterit, the perfect/aorist ending - took the place of *-ént. These endings can be derived rather unproblematically from suffixed personal pronouns, plus a demonstrative pronoun in the 3rd person (see my paper The pre-PIE personal pronouns): 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 Pre-PIE *-mu *-tu *-ø + -ta *-mu-án *-tu-án *-án + -ta *-mu-íŋ *-tu-íŋ *-íŋ + -ta PIE *-m(w) *-s(w) *-t *-mwén > *-wén *-twén > *-tér *-ént *-mwén > *-wén *-twén > *-tér *-(j)ént Tocharian may preserve *-tér in the Toch. B past ending -cer < *Tocharian). , reshaped after 3pl. - (itself lost in However, in the 1-2 pl. and du., perhaps originally to mark a transitive subject, an alternative set of endings was also available, with explicit nominative/ergative marking of the suffixed pronoun: 1 2 1 2 Pre-PIE *-mu-átu *-tu-átu *-mu-íku *-tu-íku (labializations) (delabializations) *-mwétw *-twétw *-mwéxw *-twéxw *-mésw *-twé *-mwéx *-twéx PIE *-més(w) ~ *-mós *-té *-wáh2 *-táh2 Note the irregular delabializations2 which affected these forms. When -i was added in the other forms to mark the present tense, *-mesi was no problem (we have it in Indo-Iranian), but the 2 pl. and 1/2 du. forms were apparently not capable of taking it3. So when the non-Anatolian languages dropped the variants *-wén(i)4 and *-tén(i)5, the resulting system may have looked temporarily like this: 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 past *-m *-s *-t *-més *-té *-ént *-wáh2 *-táh2 *-ént present *-mi *-si *-ti *-més(i) *-té *-énti *-wáh2 *-táh2 *-énti There may have been pressure to distinguish primary and secondary endings in the 2 pl. and in the dual, and to distinguish the dual from the plural in the 3rd person, but no obvious solution was available. However, when the perfect/aorist ending *-me was transferred to the 1 pl. imperfect (and, conversely, active *-té was transferred to the perfect/aorist), a pattern could be abstracted from the new opposition between past *-mé and present *-més6. In Italic, Celtic, Balto-Slavic and Armenian (possibly Germanic as well, but we cannot tell), a new 2pl. *-tés was created, and the new dual presents *-wh2ás, *-th2ás,*-tés7 even spread to Indo-Iranian. 2 Depalatalizations and delabializations tend to be irregular, as for instance the haphazard delabializations in Polish (bez for *biez ithout , wesoły for *wiesioły happy , et . 3 In the case of *-wah2i and *-tah2i it is actually more likely that the *-i was regularly lost in the Auslaut of the resulti g lo g diphtho g see ‘as usse , Studies in the morphophonemics of the Indo-European protolanguage). 4 Only Greek preserves an ending - ε , which looks like a conflation of *-mes (Gk. - ες) and *-wen. 5 Whether Indo-Iranian 2pl. -tana, -thana can be connected to *-ten(i) somehow, I cannot say. 6 This rendered present *-mesi no longer useful. 7 Built on the 3sg. ending *-t? This gives a late PIE dialectal system (which does not include Anatolian, Tocharian, Greek or IndoIranian fully): 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 past *-m *-s *-t *-mé *-té *-ént *-wáh2 *-táh2 *-té present *-mi *-si *-ti *-més *-tés *-énti *-wh2ás *-th2ás *-tés The former existence in Balto-Slavic of a contrast between secondary -w , - and primary -was, -tas is proven by the Lithuanian 1-2 pl. endings - and - , created analogically on the model of the dual (-w , - :: -was, -tas; , - :: -mes, -tes), before the present endings were lost. In Greek, and in part in Indo-Iranian and Tocharian8, the gaps in the system were either allowed to stand (Greek 1-2 pl. without primary/secondary distinction), or were filled instead with endings from the middle (marked in bold): 1 2 1 2 3 8 present Greek -men -te --ton -ton imperfect Greek -men -te --ton - Vedic -mas(i) -tha(na) -vas -thas -tas Toch. B 3 du. present - . Vedic -ma -ta(na) -va -tam - The stative endings A o pletely differe t set of e di gs as e ployed i the stati e , i.e. the Hittite i-conjugation, the PIE perfect and the middle (medio-passive). Again there are two sets of endings, although here the tra siti e arker *-s in the i-conjugation/perfect/aorist, *-t in the middle) appears in the 3rd person only. 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 perfect *-h2e *-th2e *-e *-me *-e *-ér -aorist *-h2e *-th2e *-s *-me *-e *-ér-s middle *-h2é*-th2é*-ó*-tó*-médh*-dhwé*-ró*-ntó- The similarities between the three paradigms are obvious. The only difficulties lie, as was the case in the active, in the 1-2 pl. endings. In the 1 pl., Vedic -ma is (rarely) written - , and more often a long vowel is required by the metre. A reconstruction *-meH has sometimes been proposed. However, also occurs in the active, and a metric long vowel is also found in the 1 sg. -a and 2 pl. -a. I would derive the long vowel ultimately from active 1 du. - , where the variation is to be expected: - vs. -vas and 1 pl. -ma vs. -mas leads to -va vs. -vas, or, as we also saw in Lith., to vs. -mas. I see no reason, therefore, to reconstruct anything but *-me for the 1 pl. stative. As we saw above, this ending *-me was later transferred to the 1 pl. active as well (though not in Greek). In the 2 pl., Vedic -a is weird enough that it must reflect the original ending. The *-te found elsewhere must have been secondarily imported from the active. This ending -a is really strange for a 2 pl., especially considering that the *-e in the stative endings is surely a secondary addition. It does ot affe t the stress or the A laut of the root, a d see s to e si ply a aug e t to re der the stative endings syllabic, which is of course the reason why it was not added to the already syllabic 3 pl. ending. This means that the 2 pl. stative ending was in fact *-ø, which makes no sense at all. The middle endings, so similar to the stative endings elsewhere, are strangely different in the 1-2 pl. The 1 pl. middle ending is sometimes reconstructed as *-medhh2 (*-medhə2), based on Gk. - εθα and Ved. -mahi, which is of course phonetically possible, but does not really look like a plausible verbal ending. I would rather reconstruct *-medh-, with the vowel of the corresponding 1 sg. ending added in Greek (at a stage when the 1 sg. was still *-h2a c.q. *-a) and Indo-Iranian. Given the pattern -C(C)V- of all the other middle endings, the form *-medh- (and its variant *-mesdh-: Hitt. -waš a-, Gk. - εσθα), must itself have been metathesized from earlier *-mdh(w)eunder the influence of non-middle *-me and *-mes. The 2 pl. ending is straightforwardly *-dhwe- (*-dhwo-), which means that the middle endings can be derived from a common pattern 1 pl. *-mdhw-, 2 pl. *-dhw-, which is exactly parallel to stative 1pl. *-m-, 2 pl. *-ø-, if the sequence *dhw were eliminated. In other words, there is a soundlaw that removes *-dhw in the Auslaut after C (all verbal roots are required to end in a consonant). The sequence is preserved in the Inlaut before V (i.e. in the middle). The endings of the perfect, the i-conjugation and the middle can thus all be derived from: 1 2 3 1 2 3 Pre-PIE *-x *-tx *-ø *-m(dhw) *-(dhw) *-án If the active endings can be derived from suffixed personal pronouns, then what is the origin of the stative endings? If we apply the two Auslautgesetze *-k(a) > *-x and *-tk(u) > *-dh3 > *-dhw to the endings reconstructed above, we arrive at the following paradigm: Early Pre-PIE 1 2 3 1 2 3 *-ka *-tka *-a *-mtku *-tku *-án This is highly reminiscent of both the Semitic and Uralic stative, where we have, for instance: 1 2 3 1 2 3 Akkadian stative - a, f. - i -ø, f. -at , f. - i i [- , f. - ] Ge’ez perfective -ku -ka, f. -ki -a, f. -at -na -kəmmu, f. -kən [-u, f. - ] Selqup stative -K2 -n i -ø [- iT2] [- iT2] -T2 PBF verb [*-m] [*-t] *(-βa)-ø *-t-mek *-t-tek *(-βa)-t The Akkadian and Selqup statives are true statives (i.e. conjugated nouns): Akk. ša Ia as, ill e ki g . The stative developed into a perfective (past tense) in Akkadian itself and in the other Semitic languages. In Samoyed, the stative endings are also those of the intransitive verb. The variation in the 2nd persons of the Semitic forms (-ta, -ti, -tun, -tin ~ -ka, -ki, -kum, -kin) can be explained if the original forms were *-tka, *-tki, *-tkun, *-tkin. The symbols K2 and T2 in Selqup stand for allophonic -k ~-ŋ, -t ~ -n in the Auslaut. The 2sg. form -n or -ŋ (so in other Samoyedic languages) is perhaps from *-tk > *-ŋ. The 1-2 pl. have endings from the active. The Proto-Balto-Finnic forms show active endings in the 1-2 sg., but the 1-2 pl. forms seem to reflect the endings of an old stative. Leaving a detailed analysis of Afro-Asiatic and Uralic aside for now, and returning to the Pre-PIE forms: if we explain the 1 pl. form as metathesized *-tmku > *-mtku, the whole paradigm can be interpreted as a verbal noun (with sg. *-a and pl. *-at ~ *-an), followed (outside of the 3rd person) by declined forms of a verb *ka, pl. *ku(n), presu a ly to e . Note that the forms of the copula clearly reflect the prefix-conjugation (*ʔa-, *ta-, *ja-; *ma-9, *ta-, *ja-), which is otherwise only attested in Afro-Asiatic. 1 2 3 1 Nostratic *-a ʔa-ka *-a ta-ka *-a *-at ma-ku Pre-PIE *-ka *-tka *-a *-tmku > *-mtku 2 *-at ta-ku *-(t)tku 3 *-an *-an 9 In Afro-Asiatic of course *na-. Early PIE *-h2*-th2*-ø*-mdhw- > *-mé(s)dhw-; Auslaut: *-m *-dhw-; Auslaut: *-ø *-ér References Abondolo, Daniele (ed.), 1998, The Uralic Languages, London-New York. nd Beekes, Robert S.P. & Michiel de Vaan, 2011, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An introduction (2 edition), Amsterdam-Philadelphia. 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