1 post tagged “nh2-suffix”

I've been working on a theory with one of my classmates on the Indo-European present stem suffix *neu/nu.
As seen in the Greek δείκνυμι for example. I'm not sure if anyone else ever proposed this, but I think it's very likely that it is actually derived from the root for `now'  *neu/nu.

Not only Greek retains this suffix. Also Tocharian B has this suffix. *nu regularly gives nä. Which isn't attested along, but does appear with the suffix *-ske/o (which is -ṣṣä/ske in Tocharian B).

And the *nu version is then the suffix -nä-ṣṣä/ske. As seen in the word:
lännaṣṣä/ske- (here <a> is phonemically /ä́/) `to leave'
Interstingly, just like in Greek, besides the present there isn't another place where this *neu/nu suffix appears. Not in the subjunctive, nor the preterite or the preterite participle.

So the present class would mean something like `I VERB now', something very appropriate for a present tense I would say. There's the problem though, that you can never really prove that this is indeed the original.

Beekes though, proposes that this present suffix is actually derived from  verb roots ending in *-u with an n-infix. Which resulted in an ending in *-nu/neu which was then reinterpreted as a new suffix. Similarly he proposes that the *-nh2/-neh2 suffix is formed in a similar way but then for roots ending in *-h2.

I personally find the present marker *neu/nu as derived from the Indo-European word for `now' a far more appealing concept. This leaves us with being unable to explain where the *-nh2 is from though.

But we have another problem. Just like that the *nu-ske/o suffix appears in Tocharian B, there's also the *nh2-ske/o suffix. Which functions in same way as the other suffix. An example of the *nh2-ske/o is this:

kärnāṣṣä/ske- `to buy' (<ā> is phonemically /á/).

But unlike the *nu-ske/o suffix, this suffix also appears as a present marker without the *ske/o suffix. In fact it's one of the most productive present classes. The so called na-presents.

Example of a na-present verb is:

tärkana- `to let go' which has a preterite tarka-.

There's no such thing as a  nä-present though.  This distribution is  strange. If they would have the same sort of origin (as Beekes proposes) you'd expect them to have the same sort of distribution. This  could be seen as argument for our hypothesis that *-neu/nu comes from `now' rather than a clipping from n-infixed roots ending in *-u. Not a very strong one though.

I have not put any time into figuring out the origin of the *nh2/neh2 suffix, I will write a new post about that soon. Feel free to add any thought you might have on this subject, or questions for that matter.