The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel

[Ryusenshi]

Is there anything Germanic is particularly conservative in?

Well, at least, it's more conservative than Latin and its descendants in preserving some forms of ablaut, like sing/sang/sung. But then Greek and Sanskrit have also kept ablaut forms.

Why today?

Press the red button to find out

Well, in that case, I wish you a happy unbirthday.

[hwhatting]

Yet, all of the eight cases of Vedic appear to have cognates in other branches of non-Anatolian IE, though the matches are not always perfect. It is similar with the personal endings and the present, imperfect, aorist and perfect forms of the verb. But Anatolian is another matter.

At least for Balto-Slavic, the question is whether it ever had the tripartite system or whether it just developed the formations which the tripartite system was built upon in a different direction. (Slavic later formed something called aorist under Iranian influence, but it's cobbled together both from formations that were integrated into the aorist in Graeco-Aryan and from old imperfectives.)

Why today?

Press the red button to find out

Well, in that case, I wish you a happy unbirthday.

Same to you!

[WeepingElf]

Yet, all of the eight cases of Vedic appear to have cognates in other branches of non-Anatolian IE, though the matches are not always perfect. It is similar with the personal endings and the present, imperfect, aorist and perfect forms of the verb. But Anatolian is another matter.

At least for Balto-Slavic, the question is whether it ever had the tripartite system or whether it just developed the formations which the tripartite system was built upon in a different direction. (Slavic later formed something called aorist under Iranian influence, but it's cobbled together both from formations that were integrated into the aorist in Graeco-Aryan and from old imperfectives.)

Fair. These forms have clear cognates in other branches of IE and therefore must be reconstructed for PIE at least for a stage after the separation of Anatolian, and Indo-Iranian doesn't seem to have lost anything, either. The question remains, though, how these forms were used back then - their usage may have been different, and cannot be reconstructed with certainty.

[abahot]

Slavic later formed something called aorist under Iranian influence.

What evidence is there that it was specifically Iranian influence that caused this?

[hwhatting]

What evidence is there that it was specifically Iranian influence that caused this?

That's a conjecture, as there was generally a lot of Iranian influence on Slavic.

[Znex]

At least for Balto-Slavic, the question is whether it ever had the tripartite system or whether it just developed the formations which the tripartite system was built upon in a different direction. (Slavic later formed something called aorist under Iranian influence, but it's cobbled together both from formations that were integrated into the aorist in Graeco-Aryan and from old imperfectives.)

The resources Slavic had for forming the aorist certainly weren't absent from the western IE languages; you see evidence in Old Italic and Celtic (eg. -s and -t perfectives) of the same suffixes and strategies you see in Greek and Indo-Iranian, if not as total an adoption as you see there.

[hwhatting]

At least for Balto-Slavic, the question is whether it ever had the tripartite system or whether it just developed the formations which the tripartite system was built upon in a different direction. (Slavic later formed something called aorist under Iranian influence, but it's cobbled together both from formations that were integrated into the aorist in Graeco-Aryan and from old imperfectives.)

The resources Slavic had for forming the aorist certainly weren't absent from the western IE languages; you see evidence in Old Italic and Celtic (eg. -s and -t perfectives) of the same suffixes and strategies you see in Greek and Indo-Iranian, if not as total an adoption as you see there.

Your point being what?

[WeepingElf]

At least for Balto-Slavic, the question is whether it ever had the tripartite system or whether it just developed the formations which the tripartite system was built upon in a different direction. (Slavic later formed something called aorist under Iranian influence, but it's cobbled together both from formations that were integrated into the aorist in Graeco-Aryan and from old imperfectives.)

The resources Slavic had for forming the aorist certainly weren't absent from the western IE languages; you see evidence in Old Italic and Celtic (eg. -s and -t perfectives) of the same suffixes and strategies you see in Greek and Indo-Iranian, if not as total an adoption as you see there.

Your point being what?

I'm not Znex, but I guess the point is that the morphemes in question are widespread enough in NW IE, including Italic and Celtic, to show that they are not specific to Greco-Aryan.

[hwhatting]

I'm not Znex, but I guess the point is that the morphemes in question are widespread enough in NW IE, including Italic and Celtic, to show that they are not specific to Greco-Aryan.

Where did I say that they are?
For the record, om March 21st I wrote in this very thread:

To me it looks rather like there was a Central European dialect continuum, of which Italic, Celtic, Germanic were a part, sharing different isoglosses. All shared with Graeco-Aryan the development of the tripartite tense-aspect system, which then was rebuilt / merged in different ways in the three branches.

To repeat myself wrt to Balto-Slavic, the difference between BS and other Post-Anatolian IE languages is that it looks to me like BS did not develop the tripartite system and used the endings and stems that the tripartite system in Graeco-Aryan and Western IE was based on into a different set of formations, with Slavic then forming a category called Aorist under Iranian influence.

[Znex]

At least for Balto-Slavic, the question is whether it ever had the tripartite system or whether it just developed the formations which the tripartite system was built upon in a different direction. (Slavic later formed something called aorist under Iranian influence, but it's cobbled together both from formations that were integrated into the aorist in Graeco-Aryan and from old imperfectives.)

The resources Slavic had for forming the aorist certainly weren't absent from the western IE languages; you see evidence in Old Italic and Celtic (eg. -s and -t perfectives) of the same suffixes and strategies you see in Greek and Indo-Iranian, if not as total an adoption as you see there.

Your point being what?

I don't see how the development of a specific aorist tense lends itself particularly to Iranian influence when the capacity already existed and did emerge in western IE languages. It may well simply be a fluke of history that separate aorist/perfective tenses didn't remain in western IE.

One thing I am interested in that emerged in Slavic without IE parallels at that time afaik is its brief but absolute tendency towards open syllables, including coda metathesis. I'm fond of the idea that this could be tied to outside influence, whether Iranian or Turkic or else, but I'm not sure of the evidence behind that.

[WeepingElf]

I'm not Znex, but I guess the point is that the morphemes in question are widespread enough in NW IE, including Italic and Celtic, to show that they are not specific to Greco-Aryan.

Where did I say that they are?

Indeed, you didn't - sorry for the misunderstanding. But I still don't get why you consider Balto-Slavic, which shares isoglosses with Germanic on one hand and Indo-Iranian on the other, an "outlier" rather than a member of the "Common IE" dialect continuum.

One thing I am interested in that emerged in Slavic without IE parallels at that time afaik is its brief but absolute tendency towards open syllables, including coda metathesis. I'm fond of the idea that this could be tied to outside influence, whether Iranian or Turkic or else, but I'm not sure of the evidence behind that.

The tendency of Slavic towards open syllables at the cost of complex onsets, together with the development of a rich sibilant inventory, reminds me a bit (but only just a bit) of Kartvelian, which may be the closest living relative of the language of the Neolithic farmers of Central Europe. In my personal speculative model of the linguistic prehistory of Europe, that unknown language would have been a substratum influence specifically on Balto-Slavic - not on Indo-Iranian that lies too far east, but also not much on Germanic which would have been separated from the Neolithic substratum by an intermediate stratum of Southwest IE (the hypothetical language of the Bell Beaker culture which I speculate to have been a sister group to Anatolian). But that, alas, is just my personal speculation which I explore in my conlangs, but I am aware that it is based on so little evidence that I cannot really call it a theory.

[hwhatting]

I don't see how the development of a specific aorist tense lends itself particularly to Iranian influence when the capacity already existed and did emerge in western IE languages. It may well simply be a fluke of history that separate aorist/perfective tenses didn't remain in western IE.

My reasoning goes like this:
1) There's no evidence that a tripartite system existed in Balto-Slavic (BS) from the Baltic side, but the present-tense system shows a mix of IE active and mediopassive - perfect endings and (non-reduplicated) perfect-looking stems that looks like BS took the stem and ending system of PIE and developed it in a different direction from the other non-Anatolian branches of IE.
2) Slavic doesn't have the reduplicated perfect either, but it has an aorist cobbled together from formations that went into the Aorist in Graeco-Aryan and from the imperfect = present stem with secondary endings. It also has a periphrastic perfect based on l-participle plus copula and an imperfect based on an extended "aorist" stem.
3) My interpretation is that Slavic developed this imitation of the tripartite system under the influence of an IE branch that had the tripartite system. My candidate for this is Iranian, as it had a well-known influence on Slavic, and it also fits geographically - Slavic (with this imitation of the tripartite system) bordered on Iranian for probably over a millennium, while Baltic (which didn't develop this system) didn't.

NB that this isn't the mainstream opinion - which would be that BS lost the perfect and Baltic also the aorist, while Slavic kept the inherited aorist (the mainstream opinion agrees that the Slavic imperfect and the periphrastic perfect are innovations).

[WeepingElf]

NB that this isn't the mainstream opinion - which would be that BS lost the perfect and Baltic also the aorist, while Slavic kept the inherited aorist (the mainstream opinion agrees that the Slavic imperfect and the periphrastic perfect are innovations).

Fair. I tend to concur with the mainstream opinion - unless it amounts to "we don't know", which is the point of departure for my speculations. Of course, the mainstream opinion may be wrong, and has been shown wrong in the past (e.g., the PIE voiceless aspirates turned out to be non-existent). But I currently don't see a particular problem with Balto-Slavic verbs, but then I'm not a Slavicist.

[KathTheDragon]

Wow, there were a lot of questions over the last couple of years that I knew the answer to, if only I hadn't disappeared.

[bradrn]

Wow, there were a lot of questions over the last couple of years that I knew the answer to, if only I hadn't disappeared.

Welcome back!

[Travis B.]

Seconded!

[WeepingElf]

Welcome back, Kath!

[KathTheDragon]

Wow, thanks. I didn't realise anybody still cared.

[hwhatting]

Wow, thanks. I didn't realise anybody still cared.

We do care. Last time I posted here and saw your name at the start of the thread, I was wondering whether you were still around, maybe just lurking...

[Ares Land]

Welcome back! I did wonder too...