Premium
On the early origins of the Germanic preterite presents
Author(s) -
Randall William,
Jones Howard
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/1467-968x.12045
Subject(s) - linguistics , verb , history , germanic languages , philosophy , german
We deal with the origins of the Germanic preterite presents within the Proto‐Indo‐European (PIE) verb system, highlighting the problems encountered when linking these verbs to existing PIE categories. We argue for the existence of a PIE ‘derived stative’ verb category formed by adding stative inflections to eventive (aorist) roots. Morphologically this category resembles the PIE perfect, but it is unreduplicated; semantically, it denotes a pure state, not a resultant state. This category may be the origin of most of the fifteen Germanic preterite presents. The derived stative category may also be seen as the missing link between the PIE root stative and the PIE perfect.