Some notes on the Thagojian perfect

First, a metanote: You'll be pleased to see that I have given up my
obsession with including the native alphabet forms, except where required
to demonstrate a particular point. I *am* trying out a few variant
romanization schemes right now, though, so spellings may be a bit
haphazard over the coming days/weeks/months. If you'd rather have at least
*something* that's stable, I can bring the native alphabet back.

Jetzt! On with the music!

The perfect in Thagojian is formed by an unusual process: An h- is
prefixed, which "steals" the underlying PIE /e/ or /o/ from the root.

For instance:

*Aleibh-
qaleft - he leaves /?aleft/
heqalift - he has left /he?alift/

*dok^-o-
dóshót - he supports /dOZOt/
hódshót - he has supported /hOdZOt/

Laryngeals do weird things, as is usual, but the underlying mechanism is
perfectly regular:

*keA-
kaqet - he desires /ka?et/
hekat - he has desired /hekat/

*deO-
doqet - he gives /do?et/
hedot - he has given /hedot/

Nothing terribly sophisticated, I'm afraid, but the notion came to me
earlier this afternoon, and I was struck by how naturally PIE it was, and
how simple it would be to implement. I can enter very many more
translation challenges now. I don't have the past or future tenses
straight yet, and the participle needs word, but it's getting there.




Paul

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