Re: Medio-passive (was: A Survey)

On Wednesday, October 1, 2003, at 11:12 , Costentin Cornomorus wrote:

> --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>>
[snip]

> What's more, -r seems to be a common sign of that
> voice. Celtic and archaic Latin have -ter (I
> think) and -tur for the impersonal (passive in
> later Latin). Hittite has -ri (eshari = he sits
> (himself)); Tocharian has -r (s‰kat‰r = spreads
> (itself) out).
Thanks - I' forgotten the Hittite evidence and wasn't aware of the
Tocharian evidence.  So the isogloss is a bit more widespread
than 'Celro-Italic'.

The PIE medio-passive _participle_ survived in a fossalized form
in the Latin 2nd plural passive ending -mini: (<-- -menoi), but
none of medio-passive tenses survived and AFAIK none survived in
other Italo-Celtic nor the Germanic ones (need to check on the
Slav & Baltic groups.  It seems best attested in ancient Greek
and the Aryan branch of IE. On the other hand the -r passive/
impersonal active has no counterpart in ancient Greek or the
aryan langs.  Does this situation reflect a dialect division
within PIE itself. Did it break up before a consistent middle
and/or passive form had developed throughout the whole group of
PIE dialects?

I seem to recall that there is a theory that Pre-PIE had an
ergative structure.


Ray
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