Topics in Anatolian Historical Grammar Prof. Dr. H. Craig Melchert

H. Craig Melchert
Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
October 15, 2012
melchert@humnet.ucla.edu
I. Standard View
The Function of the PIE Perfect
A. The PIE perfect expressed an “attained state” (sometimes styled “naktostatisch”): see among
many Delbrück (1897: 177ff., with refs. to Buttmann and Kohlmann), Renou (1925: 7),
Chantraine (1926: 4), Hoffmann (1970: 39-41), Di Giovine (1996: 261&273), Kümmel (2000:
66), Meier-Brügger (2000: 155), Tichy (2000: 88), Weiss (2009: 379&409), Fortson (2010: 104-5).
B. Major debate has concerned definition as “aspect” or “Aktionsart”: for the first see Meier-
Brügger (2000: 155), Weiss (2009: 379); for the latter Di Giovine (1996: 273ff.), Kümmel
(2000: 66), Tichy (2000: 89).
C. Value of “attained state” is recessive already in Vedic Sanskrit and Homeric Greek and
appears elsewhere only in lexicalized relics (e.g. Latin meminī ‘I remember’). By what may be
termed a “metonymic” shift in focus, the perfect comes to indicate a past action whose effects
carry into the present (‘has arrived’) and by further developments into a narrative past tense (see
e.g. Kümmel 2000: 71-82 and Chantraine, passim).
1. Vedic examples for inherited sense “attained state” (translations Geldner):
RV 1,164,10ab: tisró māts trīn pitn bíbhrad éka ūdhvás tasthāu
‘Drei Mütter, drei Väter trägt der Eine und steht doch aufrecht da.’
RV 6,10,3ab: pīpāya sá śrávasā mártyeṣu yó agnáye dadāśa vípra uktháiḥ
‘Der Redekundige schwillt an Ruhm unter den Sterblichen an, der gegen
Agni mit Lobliedern freigebig war.’
2. Homeric examples for inherited sense “attained state” (translations Murray):
Il. 1.37-38:
Il. 11.470:
II. Dissent
κλῦθί μευ, ἀργυρότοξ’, ὃς Χρυσήν ἀμφιβέβηκας Κίλλαν τε ζαθέην
‘Hear me, thou of the silver bow, who dost stand over Chryse and holy Cilla…’
δείδω μή τι πάθῃσιν ἐνὶ Τρώεσσι μονωθείς
‘I fear lest some evil befall him, alone mid the Trojans.’
A. Also a long history of interpreting the perfect as having an “intensive” value (wholly or in
part):
1. Bréal (1899-1900: 277) defines perfect as a “présent intensif”, citing Grk. ὄπωπα ‘je vois’,
ἀκήκοα ‘j’entends’ etc., allegedly expressing an “affirmation plus énergique”.
2. Hirt (1928: 279-80, citing Curtius and Bopp) rejects “attained state” analysis and insists on
“intensive Bedeutung”: τέθνηκα in the Iliad means ‘ist tot und ist tot’.
3. Meid (1983: 330-31) also stresses the intensive character of Skt. jujoṣa ‘ich genieße intensiv’
and Homeric δέδορκε used of a snake with a horrifying glare that ‘starrt und starrt und starrt’.