Indo-European: Kazuhiko Yoshida (Kyoto University)

Date: 

Monday, May 2, 2016, 5:00pm to 6:30pm

Location: 

Boylston Hall 335

Hittite aušta and maušta

Abstract: Jay Jasanoff (2003:178-8) proposes that the Hittite 3 sg. preterite naiš ‘led’ is derived from an aorist *nḗiH-s-t in a PIE presigmatic paradigm, which replaced a PIE h2e- conjugation root aorist *nóiH-e. On the other hand, aušta ‘saw’ and maušta ‘fell’ did not lose the final *-t, but preserved it by attachment of a final prop vowel a. Crucial to this development was the synchronic reanalysis of the 3 sg. preterites *aušt and *maušt as mi-conjugation forms. However, inner Hittite evidence shows that the 3 sg. preterite ending of ḫi-verbs was originally *-s, not *-s-t. It is arguable that aušta and maušta acquired its final -ta /-t/ within the relatively late prehistory of Hittite.