عنوان

The sigmatic aorist in Indo-European:

Number

TLpq303874636

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

The sigmatic aorist in Indo-European:

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

B. A. Drinka

Title Proper by Another Author

Evidence for the Space-Time Hypothesis

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

E. C. Polome

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

The University of Texas at Austin

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

1990

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

320

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

The University of Texas at Austin

Text preceding or following the note

1990

Text of Note

The morphology of Proto-Indo-European has traditionally been reconstructed as a composite of all the complexities found in the daughter languages, with a full array of tenses, moods, and aspects. This dissertation re-examines that premise by focusing on one morphological category, the usdsusd-aorist, and its distribution in the Indo-European languages. An attempt was made to collect all forms of the usdsusd-aorist/preterite in five major languages (Rgvedic Sanskrit, Gathic Avestan, Old Church Slavonic, Old Latin, and Homeric Greek,) so that a more empirical analysis could be made. Other IE languages with usdsusd-constructions (Hittite, Tocharian, Armenian, and Old Irish) were also analyzed. It was found that, despite its apparent wide distribution, the usdsusd-aorist cannot be reconstructed as a productive category for the oldest layers of the proto-language. Rather, it must have developed primarily in "late Indo-European," in the eastern area (i.e. in Indo-Iranian and Greek), like a number of other morphological categories (the imperfect tense, the long-vowel subjunctive, etc.). On the other hand, the languages of the western area which had usdsusd-preterites (Italic and Celtic), as well as Hittite and Tocharian, show unsystematic or very limited usdsusd-constructions, or else the forms usually considered to be reflexes of the usdsusd-aorist actually owe their existence to other constructions. These findings support the "Space-Time Hypothesis" first proposed by Meid (1975), which characterizes the proto-language as a dynamic, developing entity, one which shows a distinct geographical split between east and west in its later stages. The western languages and Hittite, to the extent that they contain reflexes of the usdsusd-construction at all, represent an archaic layer of development; the eastern languages, with their more fully developed usdsusd-construction, innovated in fitting this form into the aorist system. A further important conclusion which was reached concerns the connection of the lengthened grade to the usdsusd-aorist. Traditionally, the L.G. is assumed to be reconstructible for a PIE usdsusd-aorist. However, in each language where it is thought to exist, the L.G. is shown to have developed secondarily and independently through the operation of compensatory lengthening. The lack of a fixed vocalism for the usdsusd-aorist reinforces the main conclusion of the dissertation, that the usdsusd-aorist was not a productive category of the old Indo-European.

Ancient languages

aorist

Language, literature and linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics

B. A. Drinka

E. C. Polome

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y