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Proto-Indo-European Lexical Aspect and Stem Patterns

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Proto-Indo-European Lexical Aspect and Stem Patterns Proto-Indo-European lexical aspect and stem patterns Petr Kocharov* 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE PIE STEM PATTERNS According to the traditional reconstruction, largely based on the Ancient Greek and Old Indic verbal systems, the finite forms of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) verb were derived from three types of tense-aspect stems conventionally labeled “present”, “aorist”, and “perfect” since they could take the Present, Aorist, and Perfect Indicative respectively. These three types of stems are usually defined as expressing the grammatical category of aspect while endings together with the preterite prefix – augment expressed the tense, person, number, and voice categories, see Clackson 2007: 114-56 with a concise overview of the PIE verbal morphology including some issues related to the discrepancies between the Greco-Aryan and Anatolian verbal systems. Each stem type could be additionally specified by the ablaut, reduplication, and a range of affixes. The range of stem kinds per type increases in the following order: perfect (root perfect, reduplicative perfect) < aorist (root aorist, sigmatic aorist, reduplicative aorist, thematic aorist) < present (root present, reduplicated present, infix present, thematic present, *sḱe/o-present, *ye/o- presents, etc.). This distribution allows to predict that a substantial number of combinations — stem patterns — existed already in the proto-language. Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (LIV), which is nowadays the most comprehensive reference book on the PIE verb, provides reconstructions of around 1200 roots with a variety of stem patterns constituted by 20 present stems, 3 aorist stems, and one perfect stem, not taking into account causatives-iteratives, desideratives, intensives, fientives, and essives. A comparable paradigmatic diversity is still observable in Greek and Vedic, the two IE branches that inherited the three-way * Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences ; St. Petersburg State University. Email: [email protected] Part of research presented in this paper was supported by the research grant of the City of Paris “Research in Paris 2012” on the invitation of Prof. Anaïd Donabédian (INALCO, SeDyL). I am grateful to Prof. Charles de Lamberterie and Prof. Konstantin Pozdniakov for the opportunities to present part of the paper material at their seminars — Grammaire comparée des langues indo-européennes (EPHE, 24/01/2013) and Linguistique comparative historique : enjeux théoriques et méthodologiques (INALCO, LLACAN, 22/01/2013). Finally, I acknowledge the financial support of the research grant “The Proto-Indo-European root and stem-formation constituents” (Russian Science Foundation, grant n° 14-18-03585, head Prof. Nikolaj Kazansky). Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:38:34PM via free access 76 Petr Kocharov opposition of stems from their common source. Thus, van de Laar (2000) classified the Homeric verbs according to their stem patterns constructed by over 29 types of present stems, 13 aorist stems, and 6 perfect stems with some verbs participating in more than one pattern. It is likely that paradigmatic stem patterns replaced derivational models that had been connecting these stems at earlier stages of the proto-language. Within this approach, the grammatical meaning behind the derivational stem patterns needs to be described predominantly in terms of aspectual semantics and with respect to the reconstructed lexical aspectual features. 2. MAPPING OF THE ASPECTUAL MEANINGS IN RECONSTRUCTIONS The modern aspect theory offers fine methodology for describing actionality (“lexical aspect”) and aspect (“grammatical aspect”), see Bybee & Dahl 1989; Dik 1989; Klein 1994 among many others. The famous Vendlerian classification of predicates, based on the semantic parameters [± progressive], [± durative], and [± telic], distinguishes four actional classes: states [‒ progressive, + durative, ‒ telic] (e.g. to love), activities [+ progressive, + durative, ‒ telic] (e.g. to run), accomplishments [+ progressive, + durative, + telic] (e.g. to grow up), and achievements [‒ progressive, ‒ durative, + telic] (e.g. to stop); see Vendler 1957. This pioneering classification, based on English, was later adjusted taking into account typologically relevant semantic parameters; see Tatevosov 2003 for a survey of crosslinguistic actionality theory. The [± progressive] parameter was recognized as arbitrary from the typological perspective, and other parameters have been suggested in order to distinguish between states and other actional classes: [± dynamic] (unlike states, processes require the input of energy (Comrie 1976); however see Filip 1999: 33 and Gorbova 2010: 35-59 on the redundancy of the [± dynamic] feature for the description of purely aspectual semantics); [± subinterval property] — if a predicate holds true for a given interval it also holds true for every subinterval; the latter parameter describes states but not processes (Taylor 1977). Aspectual grams define predicates of different actional classes and their phases from the viewpoint of the topic time. A typologically valid model that describes a “universal” set of aspectual grams has been suggested by Plungian (2011) who operates with a set of primary aspectual meanings, which express grams denoting the relation of the topic time to the phases of a predicated situation, and secondary aspectual meanings which express aspectual meanings resulting from the change of the actional class. The primary aspectual meanings denote the overlap of the topic time and the predicated situation or its phases — beginning, middle, or final. Thus, Vendlerian achievement verbs have one aspectual gram — the punctive (topic time covers the entire situation); accomplishments can have the inchoative (topic time refers to the beginning phase), progressive (topic time refers to the middle phase), and completive (topic time refers to the final phase); activities can have the inchoative and progressive but do not have the completive, while states can have the inchoative (topic time refers to the initial change-of- state event) or durative (topic time refers to the middle phase of a state). The Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:38:34PM via free access PIE lexical aspect and stem patterns 77 secondary aspectual meanings allow to transfer a predicate from one actional class to another, e.g. the iterative represents achievement as an activity; the habitual represents achievement, accomplishment, and activity as a state; the limitative represents the middle phase of atelic verbs as an achievement1. Aspect markers combine primary and secondary aspectual meanings, taken alone or together with non-aspectual grams, in different fashions across languages. The opposition of the imperfective and perfective markers is a typical case of clusterization of aspectual grams, which can be found for example in Old Church Slavonic, and Old Armenian. Languages conceptualize predicative situations in different ways. If the basic lexical meaning of a verb covers an entire situation, a sequence of coherent phases, e.g. a change-of-state event and the resulting state (see Breu 1998), it has the potential to express all relevant aspectual grams by the forms of its paradigm. Alternatively, the basic verb may require morphological derivatives to fulfill its aspectual potential; these derivatives split the paradigm. Finally, coherent phases of a situation can be described by several distinct lexemes and can then be formally described as a case of suppletivism or as a set of distinct verbs with defective paradigms. These ways to map actional and aspectual relations between predicates are often combined in one language. The polysemy of aspectual markers as well as the actional and aspectual potential of lexemes are thus two sides of the same coin and their relation to each other should ideally be established for each of the stages of the proto-language in terms of the universal inventory of aspectual parameters and grams. In order to apply the aspect theory to the proto-language correctly, one has to find out which of the lexical aspectual contrasts were morphologically significant. The limitations of lexical reconstruction and the work of morphological analogy are the two major hindrances for research on aspect in PIE. However, as the reconstruction of stems patterns becomes increasingly precise for each of the reconstructed PIE verbs, it seems to be worth an effort to establish correlations between the lexical semantics and stem patterns in order to open new perspectives for describing the grammatical meaning of stems, stem- forming affixes, as well as the lexical meaning of roots. A probative case study has been recently carried out by Bartolotta (2009) who demonstrated the relevance of [± telic] lexical feature for PIE stem morphology on the evidence of the Vedic injunctive and the Homeric augmentless preterite forms. However the [± telic] feature alone seems to be insufficient for the adequate explanation of the PIE verbal stem patterns, and further research in this direction remains to be done. Moreover the [± telic] feature is notoriously sensitive to the semantic features of arguments of a predicate and may not be lexicalized in the verbal lexeme as such; see Paducheva 2009 for further literature on aspectual composition. It makes the application of this feature ambiguous for the classification of verbal lexemes outside their contextual uses. 1 Discrepancies between the terminological labels of different aspectological traditions
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