1 post tagged “present”

One of the greatest problems with Indo-European, is that the common reconstruction of the language's  phonology is typologically unlikely to impossible. Lately I've been focussing on the vocalic system.

The general idea is that there were two or four vowels depends on how you treat *i and *u; For the sake of this article it will be easier to view it as four vowels. The four vowels are *e, *o, *i, *u. This system is unlikely; if anything we'd at least expect the vowel *a. There is also some reason to believe that there might be the vowel *a; but the actual phonetic distribution of this vowel is so incredibly small, that the system is still extremely unlikely.

I'd rather not deny this system never existed; But I'd like to find an older, more logical system behind all this. My 'gut' tells me that *o was *a at some point, especially considering Hittite having /a/ for *o. A system like *a, *e, *i, *u. Though a lot less unlikely still doesn't quite feel right. To account for seemingly random *e/o and *i/e alternations in some situation we might like to see a *ə. And I'd want to assume that then all later *e's are in fact secondary developments from *a or *ə.

So that's a lot of assumptions; now let us take a look at some of the things that might agree with me. First know that, as Hittite seems to indicate, Perfect and Present used to be two completely unrelated categories of verbs, rather than forms of one verb system. Therefore a Perfect and Present can both be in the present tense and past tense; as odd as that may sound.

Now let's look at the reduplicated forms of both a present and a perfect (I believe pre-Hittite-Indo-European did have reduplication). I only gave first, second and third singular, and third plural respectively; With the 1st and 2nd plural I'm not very confident on how archaic those forms are; They don't quite function like the rest.
 
Present                 Perfect        
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-m+i        *de-dóh₃-h₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-s+i         *de-dóh₃-th₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-t+i          *de-dóh₃-e
*dʰi-dʰh₁-ént+i         *de-dh₃-ér     

There's several remarkable things about these two paradigms. First the Present
 has e-grade in the root, while the perfect has o-grade. But not only that, the present has a reduplication with *i, while the perfect has a reduplication with *e. Last but not least, the perfect has three endings ending in *e; while according to the rules of syncope, we wouldn't like to see final *e's or *o's at all. And in general we do not wish to see the vowels *e and *o outside of the accent at all. Nevertheless they're there, it'd be crazy to deny that.

Now let's look at both version of these forms as I would reconstruct them in their Pre-Syncope-Indo-European.
Present                  Perfect       
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-me+i        *de-dóh₃-h₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-sa+i         *de-dóh₃-th₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-to+i          *de-dóh₃-e
*dʰi-dʰeh₁-énta+i        *de-doh₃-éra 

Somehow though the *e's I reconstruct for the perfect did not syncopate like the one in say *-me did. This brought me to think that these vowels might be of a fundamental different nature than the normal *e. Let's assume that this vowel is *ə

For the sake of unification we'd like the reduplication vowels to originally be from the same source as well. And dare I say it, I'd personally feel for unifying the root vowels as well, into an *a from the *i,*u,*a,*ə-stage of Pre-Indo-European. One again quite a lot of assumptions but let's look at the paradigm first before I continue.

Present                   Perfect        
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-me+i        *də-dáh₃-h₂ə
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-sV+i         *də-dáh₃-th₂ə
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-to+i          *də-dáh₃-ə
*dʰə-dʰah₁-éntV+i      *də-dah₃-érV 

Note how I'm now using *V for unknown vowel because the previously used placeholder vowel <a> is now being used for an actual *a. Also note how in endings -me, -to and -érV I'm still writing the previous' stage's vowels. I do not pretend to know what these forms would be in this stage of Indo-European, but writing them all down as V would be silly, as we have significantly more data what they become in a later then the vowels I've denoted as V. And since *e nor *o overlap with the proposed system, they're not in the way.

Right so now onto the forms; what can we say? You'd almost like to assume that the *+i caused i-umlaut on all vowels; but this is sadly impossible for the secondary endings (without *i) also display e-grade, and it would be too far a stretch to assume that this was analogy. The other difference is that the all Present endings only have non-ə vowels for endings. Somehow this seems to have heightened the *ə and *a to *i and *e respectively.

Now sharp readers might want to point out the -érV is also a non-ə ending. They would be right, but realise that the vocalisme of the root becomes Ø in modern Indo-European, so there is a chance that the pre-syncope vowel there was actually *e and not *o, as we would expect from the present.

This heightening of the vowel because of non-high-vowels is very difficult to support phonetically though. I have tried to fit in some syncopated *i somewhere to account for the vowel-heightening, but this would be too far fetched. It almost looks like a sort of anti-vowel-harmony, where the vowels preceding the suffix disharmonise with the suffix vowel. I'm curious if anyone knows such a language, please tell me if you do.

I do not pretend to know how this will solve itself; nor am I sure if I'm thinking in the right direction, I'm going to need more proof (maybe in the nominals?) and more plausible soundshifts to be able to support this theory fully myself. But I just decided to put down my thoughts here, so that people can think along. So please any thoughts or questions are welcome.