# Development of past participle



## PersoLatin

Is it possible to ascertain at what stage of a language's evolution, (the need for) past participles develops? In the context of IE languages, I want to find if, pp's or some elements of them existed before they split? I appreciate the 'split' wasn't a single event, but looking at French, English and Persian past participles, their structure & use, particularly in formation of tenses, seems to follow a similar pattern, and this, either had already developed in the parent language, or was somehow built-in in the child languages, such that independent developments (of pp's) yielded similar outcomes.


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## ahvalj

The French, English and Persian Past participles on *-_to_- go back to the Proto-Indo-European deverbal adjectives that were not participles in PIE (and still aren't in e. g. Greek). However, PIE had a Perfect participle on *-_us_-, which is attested in most branches, as an actual participle or a lexicalized relic. In Balto-Slavic (e. g. Lithuanian and Russian), the -_us_-participle has specialized as Past Active, while the -_to_-participle as Past Passive, but this is a recent development.

The formation of periphrastic constructions with such participles is coded in the human psychology, as they emerge again and again in different families from the available material. Among European languages, they exist in Uralic.


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## PersoLatin

Thanks ahvalj. 



ahvalj said:


> The French, English and Persian Past participles on *-_to_-


In the above languages, are there examples of this, or


ahvalj said:


> PIE had a Perfect participle on *-_us_-,


this type, that you can give? I appreciate they may not look familiar but you never know.


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## ahvalj

French — all forms of participe passé:
_aimé < _Latin_ amātus
fini < fīnītus
ouvert < apertus
dit < dictus
pris < praehensus_ (_s<*ss<*tt_)


English — all forms of the Past participle on _-ed, -d_ and _-t_ (forms on -_en_ come from the parallel PIE variant on _*-eno-_):
_liked_ < Old English _ȝe-līcod_ < Late Common Germanic _*(ǥa-)līkōđaz
sold_ < _ȝe-seald_ < _*(ǥa-)saliđaz_


Persian — all forms of the Past Participle on _-d/ta_ < Old Persian _*-ta-ka-:
kærde_ < Classical Persian _karda_ < Old Persian _*kartaka-_

The Sg. 3 of the Simple Past _-d/t_ < Old Persian _-ta-_ (the participle):
_kærd_ < Classical Persian _kard_ < Old Persian _karta- _(e. g. Old Persian _mana kartam_ "made by me")


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## ahvalj

The -_us_-participle in Germanic is attested in the Gothic _berusjos_ "parents" (etymologically, the Nominative Plural feminine of the Perfect participle of _bairan_ "to give birth"). In various languages it also has a parallel stem _*-ut-,_ of which Gothic knows _weitwoþs_ "witness" (_woþ_ reflects the lengthened _o_-grade, *_-u̯ōt-_).

Avestan has two forms of this participle attested, _vidvāh_ "having learned" (Genitive Singular _vidušah,_ Dative Singular _vidušai_), cognate to the above Gothic _weitwoþs,_ and _nansvāh_ "disappeared" (_Beekes RSP · 1988 · A grammar of Gata-Avestan: _194). If I am not mistaken, this participle has left no traces in later Iranic. It seems to be unattested in Italic (and hence Latin and French) as well.


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## Dib

ahvalj said:


> The Sg. 3 of the Simple Past _-d/t_ < Old Persian _-ta-_ (the participle):
> _kærd_ < Classical Persian _kard_ < Old Persian _karta- _(e. g. *Old Persian mana kartam "made by me"*)



Incidentally, this "manā kṛtam/kartam" construction evolved into Middle Persian "man kird" (I did (it)). Modern Persian "man kardam" is the result of a syntactic innovation on this form.


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## ahvalj

Dib said:


> Incidentally, this "manā kṛtam/kartam" construction evolved into Middle Persian "man kird" (I did (it)). Modern Persian "man kardam" is the result of a syntactic innovation.


Interestingly, this _kird_ reflects the etymological _*kr̥tam_ with the expected zero grade, whereas the preserved Old Persian texts have the leveled _kartam _with the _e_-grade.


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## Dib

ahvalj said:


> Interestingly, this _kird_ reflects the etymological _*kr̥tam_ with the expected zero grade, whereas the Old Persian texts have the leveled _kartam _with the _e_-grade.



How would we know that? As far as I understand, Old Persian script does not distinguish the two. Isn't it so?


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## ahvalj

Dib said:


> How would we know that? As far as I understand, Old Persian script does not distinguish the two. Isn't it so?


I thought there was a separate sign for r̥, but:
"[t]he sign <ra> was also used to spell r̥, the Indo-Iranian so-called “vocalic _r_”" (_Skjærvø PO · 2005 · An introduction to Old Persian: _21).
On the other hand, _kard_ implies _kartam, _so, you're right, we don't know if this leveling had occurred already in Old Persian. Avestan has the regular -_kr̥ta-_ (_Beekes: _194).


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## fdb

Old Persian kṛta- > Middle Persian kird (zero-grade, as expected)

In New Persian there is a merger of the OP ppp kṛta- with the OP infinitive čartanay (e-grade), resulting in the ppp kard and the infinitive kardan. These have their k- from kṛta- and their -a- from čartanay.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> Old Persian kṛta- > Middle Persian kird (zero-grade, as expected)
> 
> In New Persian there is a merger of the OP ppp kṛta- with the OP infinitive čartanay (e-grade), resulting in the ppp kard and the infinitive kardan. These have their k- from kṛta- and their -a- from čartanay.


Clear now, thanks. I forgot this _č._


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## ahvalj

Then I have to change in #4 _*karta-_ to _kata-_ (_*kr̥ta-_) and _*kartaka-_ to _*kr̥taka-._


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> Avestan has two forms of this participle attested, _vidvāh_ "having learned" (Genitive Singular _vidušah,_ Dative Singular _vidušai_), cognate to the above Gothic _weitwoþs,_ and _nansvāh_ "disappeared" (_Beekes RSP · 1988 · A grammar of Gata-Avestan: _194).



Hoffmann/Forssman 2004 pp. 238-9 have more than two dozen Avestan examples of perf. act. part. in -wāh : -uš. It is found also in Vedic.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> Hoffmann/Forssman 2004 pp. 238-9 have more than two dozen Avestan examples of perf. act. part. in -wāh : -uš. It is found also in Vedic.


And what happened with the Avestan text between 1988 and 2004 (Beekes writes "there are only two active forms")?


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> And what happened with the Avestan text between 1988 and 2004 (Beekes writes "there are only two active forms")?



Beekes was only concerned with the Gatha dialect ("Old Avestan").


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> Beekes was only concerned with the Gatha dialect ("Old Avestan").


Ah, thanks.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> Beekes was only concerned with the Gatha dialect ("Old Avestan").


Don't you know, did some forms of this participle persist in Persian?


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> Then I have to change in #4 _*karta-_ to _kata-_ (_*kr̥ta-_) and _*kartaka-_ to _*kr̥taka-._



"kata-" is wrong. The OP form is spelt k-r-t-, for /_kr̥ta-/._


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> "kata-" is wrong. The OP form is spelt k-r-t-, for /_kr̥ta-/._


Isn't the actual cuneiform _ka-ta?_ I mean't the attested form with the reconstruction in parentheses.


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## fdb

No, the cuneiform spelling is k-r-t


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> Don't you know, did some forms of this participle persist in Persian?



At the moment, I can only think of the month name and day name which occurs in MP as ddw /day/ in Pahlavi script, also Parthian dtš, Sogdian δtš, Choresmian dδw, all borrowed (or adopted)from the Avestan gen. sing. dadušō “(day) of the creator”; also in the Bactrian personal name δαθϸο-μαρηγο “servant of the creator”.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> No, the cuneiform spelling is k-r-t


Then why not /karta-/ with _k_ introduced already in Old Persian?


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## ahvalj

I'd like to add to my original reply that the Perfect participle wasn't actually the Past one: this was its later development, the original meaning of this participle was resultative, e. g. _*u̯eı̯du̯ōs~u̯eı̯du̯ōts_ "who/which has learned and now knows". So, strictly speaking, we don't know if Proto-Indo-European had any specialized Past participle.


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> Then why not /karta-/ ?



Rather than “why not” we should be asking “why”: Why should OP be different from Skt kṛta-, Avestan kərəta-? Also, Manichaean MP qyrd /kird/ requires kṛta-, not *karta-.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> Rather than “why not” we should be asking “why”: Why should OP be different from Skt kṛta-, Avestan kərəta-? Also, Manichaean MP qyrd /kird/ requires kṛta-, not *karta-.


I need a lesson in cuneiform script. So, if I understand correctly, _karta-_ would be _ka-ta-_ and _kr̥ta- — ka-ra-ta-?_


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## fdb

No, k-r-t could in principle be either /karta/ or /k_r̥ta_/.


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## ahvalj

The description of Middle Persian I have just checked mentions the Preterite _kard_ already in that language, so — I don't insist but purely hypothetically — couldn't it then be that Old Persian texts reflected _karta-_ as a newer form parallel to the etymological one with _r̥? _Cp. _ba-ra-ta-_>_burd, ma-ra-ta->murd_ where there is no question.


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## Dib

ahvalj said:


> The -_us_-participle in Germanic is attested in the Gothic _berusjos_ "parents" (etymologically, the Nominative Plural feminine of the Perfect participle of _bairan_ "to give birth"). In various languages it also has a parallel stem _*-ut-,_ of which Gothic knows _weitwoþs_ "witness" (_woþ_ reflects the lengthened _o_-grade, *_-u̯ōt-_).





fdb said:


> It is found also in Vedic.



Indeed. I was holding my guns, in order to not make a branch to the Old Persian kr̥ta- discussion; but interestingly both the -us- and -ut- variants occur as parts of the declension pattern of this participle in Vedic, e.g. a learned person is:

n.s. vidvān (< *vid*vāṃs*)
g.s. vid*uṣ*aḥ
i.p. vid*vad*bhiḥ


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## ahvalj

It is indeed attested in Vedic, and in Greek, but PersoLatin asked about French, English and Persian, so I tried not to deviate (the idealistic attempt overturned by the subsequent dscussion).


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> Cp. _ba-ra-ta-_>_burd, ma-ra-ta->murd_ where there is no question.



I am not sure that you understand how OP cuneiform script works. The so-called inherent /a/ is a fiction, based on a false analogy to Hindi. b-r-t- is /br̥t/ > /burd/. m-r-t is /mr̥t/ > murd.


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> I am not sure that you understand how OP cuneiform script works. The so-called inherent /a/ is a fiction, based on a false analogy to Hindi. b-r-t- is /br̥t/ > /burd/. m-r-t is /mr̥t/ > murd.


But there are separate signs for _ku, gu, tu, du, nu, ru, mu, ji, di, mi_ and _vi,_ so why is this a false analogy?

What I meant is that since in Middle Persian we find _burd, murd _but _kard/kird_ for the Old Persian _b-r-t-, m-r-t-_ and _k-r-t-_ then we don't know exactly whether this _kard_ originated after those cuneiform signs or is the outcome of a contemporary parallel form hidden in the imperfection of the Old Persian orthography.


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## fdb

There is a fundamental study by Karl Hoffmann, “Zur altpersischen Schrift” (1975; reprinted in his _Aufsätze zur Indoiranistik_, pp. 620-45). Have a look at it; then we can discuss things further.


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> The so-called inherent /a/ is a fiction, based on a false analogy to Hindi. b-r-t- is /br̥t/ > /burd/. m-r-t is /mr̥t/ > murd.


Hi fdb,

With reference to OP writing, is what you said above, widely known and accepted, and is the topic referred to as 'inherent /a/'?

What you say is quite clear, still, I don't want to misunderstand. I have said what I believe, is a similar thing in this thread (below in post #40), which was something I noticed after learning the OP cuneiform alphabet and checking many familiar words in what's available.



PersoLatin said:


> If you drop the short vowels (a) from ahūramazda, you'd get hurmuzd and you can't prove those vowels were ever there, so hurmuzd is much closer to the original pronunciation. You just have to look at bozorg (great) in cuneiform, v-z-r-g, we are told it was pronounced vazaraga, which is just as valid as a pronunciation as ahūramazda, is.


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## ahvalj

PersoLatin said:


> Hi fdb,
> 
> With reference to OP writing, is what you said above, widely known and accepted, and is the topic referred to as 'inherent /a/'?
> 
> What you say is quite clear, still, I don't want to misunderstand. I have said what I believe, is a similar thing in this thread (below in post #40), which was something I noticed after learning the OP cuneiform alphabet and checking many familiar words in what's available.


So, do you think Old Persian had no vowel _a_? The truth is that the Old Persian script used the same signs for _C_ and _Ca,_ so the question which variant is more inherent is purely academic: we need to know the history of each particular word to decide which reading is valid in each case (and for _k-r-t-~ka-ra-ta-_ the history allows both interpretations, as _kr̥ta _and _karta_).


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## fdb

Of course OP had a vowel /a/. It is just that it is written only initially (and at the beginning of the hinterglied of compounds), where it written with the character <a>.


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## PersoLatin

ahvalj said:


> So, do you think Old Persian had no vowel _a_?


Of course not, I was hoping to confirm with fdb, if by 'inherent /a/, he meant the /a/'s in a word like vazarga etc.

It's very likely 'vzrg' would have been pronounced, by OP speakers, something very close to its MP (and NP) counterpart, i.e. w*u*z*u*rg with the two strong vowels shown, as part of the word (in Pahalvi).



fdb said:


> It is just that it is written only initially (and at the beginning of the hinterglied of compounds), where it written with the character <a>.


Can you give an example of this please?


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## ahvalj

For the script, you can consult here: _Skjærvø PO · 2005 · An introduction to Old Persian_ — Skjærvø PO · 2005 · An introduction to Old Persian.pdf on pp. 14–19, in particular _adam_ "I" (p. 19).


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## PersoLatin

Thanks ahvalj, is there one for Pahlavi you can recommend? (I have MacKenzie's Pahlavi dictionary)


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## fdb

PersoLatin said:


> It's very likely 'vzrg' would have been pronounced, by OP speakers, something very close to its MP (and NP) counterpart, i.e. w*u*z*u*rg with the two strong vowels shown, as part of the word (in Pahalvi).



v-z-r-k = OP wazṛka > MP wuzurg > NP buzurg. The development of vocalic ṛ to /ur/ is normal in the vicinity of rounded consonants (in this case /w/).


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> Can you give an example of this please?



To take your Ahuramazda example, in OP cuneiform, it was spelt a-u-r-m-z-d-a-(+inflectional endings if required) with an initial a-.



PersoLatin said:


> Thanks ahvalj, is there one for Pahlavi you can recommend? (I have MacKenzie's Pahlavi dictionary)



Just search for Skjærvø's other books on google. They are freely available online. He has books on Avestan, Middle Persian, Sogdian, etc.


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## ahvalj

Yes, e. g. here: http://bayanbox.ir/view/8882150498859088732/Pahlavi-Primer-Prods-Oktor-Skjaerv.pdf


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> v-z-r-k = OP wazṛka


Hi fdb, this is most probably an elementary question, how we know there were two a's in w*a*zṛk*a*, and not any other short vowels? The following two reasons don't apply:


fdb said:


> It is just that it is written only *initially* (and at the* beginning of the hinterglied of compounds*), where it written with the character <a>.


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## fdb

PersoLatin said:


> Hi fdb, this is most probably an elementary question, how we know there were two a's in w*a*zṛk*a*, and not any other short vowels? The following two reasons don't apply:



Because other short vowels would have been indicated by the signs <u> or <i>.


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> Because other short vowels would have been indicated by the signs <u> or <i>.


Thank you.

Please bear with me, I have looked but not found the answer(s) to the following question.

How do we know <a> is in those positions at all, considering the OP script only has consonants v-z-r-k? I'm not suggesting there was never any vowels.


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> How do we know <a> is in those positions at all, considering the OP script only has consonants v-z-r-k? I'm not suggesting there was never any vowels.



Since nobody else explained it, I'll explain my understanding. It may diverge in details from the usual scholarly arguments, because I am not an expert in the field, but I believe, it follows them in essence.

1) The one between v and z is easy. Initial vz- is not allowed in any of the descendant and related languages. So, we expect vaz-.

2) Whether we have -ara-/-ar-/-ra-/-ṛ- in the middle is more tricky, and there has traditionally been disagreement among the scholars on this point. However, it seems the general consensus today is for a syllabic -ṛ-, based on the Middle Persian evidence, and also because it lends itself to an easier etymology (see point 3 below) of the whole word. Since you have Skjærvø's Old Persian book now, plz. take a look on p. 63 where he explains the syllabic -ṛ-. Note that what we are writing as -ṛ-, Skjærvø writes as -ạr- with a+underdot for OP. This may represent a better *phonetic* representation of the *phoneme* /ṛ/, but in any case it needs to be distinguished clearly from -ar-/-ra-/-ara- containing the normal short /a/ and a consonantal r.

3) Now the question whether there should be an -a at the end or not. This is fairly simple to answer for OP vocabulary as a system, rather than individual words. Based on Sanskrit and Avestan (but also with parallels in other older IE languages), we can surmise that Indo-Iranian nouns/adjectives had different inflectional paradigms depending on the last sound in their *stem*. The attested OP noun and adjective forms are also consistent with this paradigmatic distinction. So, if a word is attested in many different grammatical forms, e.g. x-š-a-y-θ-i-y- (king) > nom. sing. X (I am using X= x-š-a-y-θ-i-y as a short-hand, but it can stand for any a-stem masculine word in principle), acc. sing. X-m, gen. sing. X-h-y-a, gen. plu. X-a-n-a-m, nom. plu. X-a, it is easy to see here that the final sound of the stem of X was *historically* (i.e. in Proto-Indo-Iranian) an -a-, because the paradigm matches exactly what the a-stem paradigm is expected to look like in OP.
A word like v-z-r-k- is, however, more problematic, because it has not been attested in too many grammatical forms. As far as I could find, it occurs only as masc. nom. sing. v-z-r-k and fem. loc. sing. v-z-r-k-a-y-a. This is consistent with masc. a-stem/fem. ā-stem, a common pattern (the most common?) among adjectives in Indo-Iranian.(I)
Secondly, the assumption of a final adjective formative suffix -ka- (and hence a historical a-stem for the whole word) would provide the word a plausible etymology, as Skjærvø explains on p. 70 of his Old Persian primer.
So, what we get from this argumentation is that these words (x-š-a-y-θ-i-y- quite certainly, and v-z-r-k- most probably) are *historically* a-stem. However, we also know that this stem -a was lost by the time of New Persian. It is usually assumed to have been lost in Middle Persian already, but I don't know based on what evidence. If we consider that to be true nevertheless, the stem -a was lost some time during the Old Persian period or just before or just after. Skjærvø seems to have the same opinion: "It is also not impossible that final short -a became a reduced vowel or was lost" (p. 49).

So, /vazṛka/ seems to be the most likely *phonemic* shape of the word in masc. nom. sing. *Phonetically*, it might have been something like [vazərk(ə)] etc. but that would be much more difficult to ascertain.

----
*(I) EDIT:* Here, I should have added why this does not fit with a non-a-stem interpretation of v-z-r-k. The only such interpretation consistent with the spelling is a consonant stem with the masc. nom. sing. ending in the consonant /-k/. The first question is:
(A) whether etymologically expected final -k's survive in Old Persian (spelling), while it is known to drop many other final consonants.
Be as it may, let's assume, it does survive. In that case, its feminine form is expected to have either the same consonant stem or an ī-stem. In both cases,
(B) the expected fem loc sing form would be *v-z-r-C-*i*-y-a, where C= most likely č/j/š (šy < *čy / from IIr secondary palatal series) or maybe even θ/d/z (from IIr primary palatal series), but also much less likely k/g if analogically restored (Sanskrit, as far as I know, has none with k/g in this form). In any case, the ending would be *-i-y-a rather than the attested -a-y-a, which clearly shows an ā-stem. In Sanskrit, we know, ā-stem feminines from consonant stem masculines are basically nonexistent. I'll be surprised if the situation is materially different in Iranian. But, I'd love to be corrected if it is.
So, bottom line, even with only two attested grammatical forms, it is very unlikely for v-z-r-k to be anything other than a-stem.


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## PersoLatin

^ Thank you Dib. I am going look at this in a different way, arguing that vazṛka is not, as you concluded below:


Dib said:


> So, /vazṛka/ seems to be the most likely *phonemic* shape of the word in masc. nom. sing. *Phonetically*, it might have been something like [vazərk(ə)] etc. but that would be much more difficult to ascertain.



(In order to reduce confusion between the spelling and the actual word, I will use 'great' for references to OP, MP and NP variants of v-z-r-k)

For the word 'great' we have hard evidence that shows its spelling, i.e. the consonants and their positions, in the following scripts:

1) OP cuneiform v-z-r-k
2) MP Pahlavi (written right to left), wzrg - image 1.
2.a) MP Pahlavi, wz*u*rg (in MacKenzie's, there's no Pahlavi version with a vowel between w & z, i.e. w*u*zurg, and where he shows the Latin wuzurg against Pahlavi, the word is wz*w*rg (image 1), there maybe a version with two u's in Pahlavi somewhere, but I can't find it in MacKensie's or elsewhere.
3) NP Perso-Arabic, *ب ز رگ* (bozorg)

(Cuneiform, Pahlavi and Perso-Arabic are all Persian variants of the following Semetic scripts, Sumero-Akkadian, Aramaic & Arabic, respectively)

As you correctly say:


Dib said:


> 1) The one between v and z is easy. Initial vz- is not allowed in any of the descendant and related languages. So, we expect vaz-.


 The Pahlavi spelling wz*w*rg/wz*u*rg and the above 'rule', together point to wuzurg as the likeliest pronunciation for 'great', starting sometime in the MP period, this then shows that the pronunciation for 'great' has not changed, greatly, (hard u to soft o) since at least the start of Sassanian period, i.e. for around 1776 years or so, and I believe this is the same as, or close to, the main stream understanding.

I argue that it is reasonable to assume wuzurg was the pronunciation from the start of MP, sometime around 200-300 BC, i.e. for over 2200 years, I then argue that it is reasonable to assume vuzurk was the likeliest OP pronunciation and NOT vazṛka, unless of course there's hard evidence to counter this, considering the MP version is a one-to-one transliteration from OP cuneiform.

*The ending <a> in vazṛka, was not there:*

I have been looking at words ending in g & k in Pahlavi, mainly as part of research for this thread, I was particularly interested in finding words that ended in g/k, firstly, with 'g' being an integral part the word, like frahan*g*, frasn*g* or war*g*, and secondly as part of a suffix, as in âluda*g*, setâra*g*, târi*k*, bâri*k* etc., and 'great' falls in the former category. The reason I say this, is because the Pahlavi letter representing 'g' in the latter group, is different to the one in the former group (image 2). I don't know the mainstream view on this, but I argue that, some but not all g/k endings in MP words, were suffixes (diminutive ak/ek/ok and associative ag/ig/īg/āg/ūg/ōg) and some were integral to the word, like wzurg, tagarg (hail), sang(stone), âhang(music, melody), ĉang(harp), tang(tight) and many more, in Mackenzie.

Getting back to the main issue, let's look at the MP wr*g* (barg - برگ, leaf - image 3) & wzur*g *(image 1), you will see that the end letters are identical. I argue that it is reasonable to assume, the OP counterpart of MP wr*g* (barg, leaf), would have been v-r-k. If the assertion that <a> existed after k in vazṛka, is true, then the OP v-r-k would have been pronounced 'varka', this then present a problem, as this 'a' will clash with the Persian suffix 'a', used here in dasta (handle, bunch) & ŝira (syrup), & therefore this changes vark - leaf, to varka - barga/برگه ورقه/sheet of paper, so how would you/they distinguish between the two, varka for 'leaf' and varka for 'sheet of paper'.

The left part of each image is cut and pasted straight from MacKenzie dictionary, the 2/3 columns on the right are added by me.


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## Treaty

Considering there hasn't been a reply for a while, I try to share some of my understandings:

In the سپردن thread, we already discussed a number of words with exact similar spelling but different pronunciations in MP/ENP and NP (e.g., سپر- شمر- خور). Having the exact transliteration in a vowel-less or incomplete abugida script doesn't guarantee the same pronunciation in different stages of a language. Therefore, the corresponding spelling of بزرگ in OP and MP is not a strong evidence for their similar pronunciation.

Considering OP w-z-r-k ('great') we can look at a number of cognates in Avestan (_vazra_: 'club', > NP _gurz_) and Sanskrit (_vajra_: hard, impenetrable, mighty, *thunderbolt, _vāja_: vigour, strength). This means that we would expect something similar in OP as well_. _The problem is that the extant OP texts don't have any word with zo-/zu- in it (there is a place called Zuzza, OP z-u-z-a, but considering it is a foreign word, we can't really be sure of its pronunciation). There is also no contemporary name left in a vowelled language containing v-z-r-k (there is Greek_ tan*uoxark*es_, but it is not clear if it is _tanu-vazṛka_ or _tanua-xšaθraka_). Of course, one can argue that _ṛ>ur _shift had already occurred in OP (Royal) but isn't visible into the cuniform because of the lack of zo/zu character. The problem with this argument is that we should expect similar [ṛ] as in _bṛt- _(بُرد MP bwrd-) and _mṛt- _(مُرد MP mwrd-) to be written as b-u-r-t- and mu-r-t- as other words with bo/mo were. However, they were written as b-r-t and m-r-t.

As for the spelling difference between two [g]/[k] endings, it is also interesting for me. However, there are many words with "inherent" [k]/[g] endings which are represented by the ا shape [g] (same as -ag suffix). All of these words have a vowel preceding [g]/[k]. While there are also vowel+[g] which are spelled by the د shape [g], all consonant+[g] which are shown by this letter, irregardless of whether that [g] was a part of their root or an older -ka suffix. Let's wait for more expert opinions.

P.S. ورق and برگ are not etymologically related. ورق is a Semitic word (cognates are _y-r-q_ "to be green/pale" in Aramaic and Hebrew, cf. یرقان , _urqu/waraqu_ in Assyrian).


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## PersoLatin

Treaty said:


> P.S. ورق and برگ are not etymologically related. ورق is a Semitic word (cognates are _y-r-q_ "to be green/pale" in Aramaic and Hebrew, cf. یرقان , _urqu/waraqu_ in Assyrian).


Thank you Treaty, I got this wrong.



Treaty said:


> However, there are many words with "inherent" [k]/[g] endings which are represented by the ا shape [g] (same as -ag suffix). All of these words have a vowel preceding [g]/[k].


I agree this doesn't help, but can we be sure those /g/ endings, are inherent in those words? And which ones are you thinking about?


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## PersoLatin

Treaty said:


> The problem with this argument is that we should expect similar [ṛ] as in _bṛt- _(بُرد MP bwrd-) and _mṛt- _(مُرد MP mwrd-) to be written as b-u-r-t- and mu-r-t- as other words with bo/mo were. However, they were written as b-r-t and m-r-t.


I don't understand this fully, to help, could you point me to a source that shows both cuneiform and Pahlavi for بُرد and مُرد?


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> I don't understand this fully, to help, could you point me to a source that shows both cuneiform and Pahlavi for بُرد and مُرد?



I didn't understand Treaty's point about بُرد either, but I think I understand the one about مُرد. The spelling in OP cuneiform is m-r-t- (e.g. Darius Behistun DB5.20: m-r-t-h-y-a, Xerxes Persepolis XPh55: m-r-t). I think Treaty's point is that in Old Persian cuneiform, "m" is written with different "letters" depending on the following vowel. The standard wisdom is that the "m"-letter used in this word does not occur before "i" and "u". So there couldn't possibly be an unwritten -u- in this word. So, if it was *murt-, the expected spelling would be *mu-u-r-t- or *mu-u-v-r-t- or *mu-r-t- (where "mu" is the m-letter used before u).

From my point of view, when you propose unwritten u's in your interpretation of v-z-r-k- you are challenging one key aspect of the OP cuneiform script as it is usually understood, that no i and u vowels are omitted from the spelling unless it is clear from the preceding consonant-letter (i.e. letters like "m", which have separate shapes depending on the following vowel), though even in those cases the i/u are usually written as separate letters as well. It is also not clear to me whether you are proposing omission of "u" as a special irregular spelling for the proposed *vuzurk alone, or you propose this as a regular aspect for the script. In short, it is quite unclear to me on what points you agree with the "traditional wisdom", and on what you don't. Apart from scripts, I also don't understand whether you consider OP an Indo-European language and as a corollary, consider comparison with other Indo-European languages relevant, or not. Your argumentation of v-z-r-k, especially about the final vowel, suggests you don't (since you made no comment on the effect of the stem-final sounds on the grammar in ancient IE languages), but in other threads, it seems, you are satisfied with IE etymologies. I understand, of course, that a detailed description of your whole idea would probably take pages of argument, rather than what is possible on this forum. But without understanding your general framework, it's hard to evaluate individual proposals.



PersoLatin said:


> (Cuneiform, Pahlavi and Perso-Arabic are all Persian variants of the following Semetic scripts, Sumero-Akkadian, Aramaic & Arabic, respectively)



Btw, I don't know whether it was just a passing observation, or it has some more deep impact on your argumentation. But, in general, Sumerian/Akkadian cuneiform scripts worked very differently from the semitic abjads, like Aramaic, Arabic. It also seems to be the general scholarly consensus that OP cuneiform was an independent invention (I'd guess, inspired by Akkadian), rather than a Persian adaptation of Sumerian/Akkadian writing system. It is far more simple, to start with, having like 20 times fewer signs in the inventory.



PersoLatin said:


> I argue that it is reasonable to assume, the OP counterpart of MP wr*g* (barg, leaf), would have been v-r-k. If the assertion that <a> existed after k in vazṛka, is true, then the OP v-r-k would have been pronounced 'varka', this then present a problem, as this 'a' will clash with the Persian suffix 'a', used here in dasta (handle, bunch) & ŝira (syrup), & therefore this changes vark - leaf, to varka - barga/برگه ورقه/sheet of paper, so how would you/they distinguish between the two, varka for 'leaf' and varka for 'sheet of paper'.



Can you give some evidence of existence of this opposition in Old Persian, please? Also, it would be nice if you could provide the Middle Persian forms for such oppositions. It will then be easier to guess what the OP forms might have been like, if they are not directly attested in OP.


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## PersoLatin

Hi Dib



Dib said:


> In short, it is quite unclear to me on what points you agree with the "traditional wisdom"


I believe, in relation to OP, and to a large extent MP,  "traditional wisdom" you refer to, is very convoluted, over analysed and complicated, however scholarly it is. I can understand these techniques may be useful in cases of dead languages, but not for a language like OP, which has a living descendant like NP, with so many common and unchanged words. I believe to establish the pronunciation of OP and MP words, we should work backwards from NP, but also use Sanskrit and Avesta, where there's no NP equivalents. The MP words I sent in those images, are virtually identical in NP, so why look at Sanskrit and Avesta, in those cases.

I used 'great' to show that the word has not changed , in spelling (at all), in pronunciation (a little), for at least 1776 (attested), even since 300BC (not attested), so I don't see why we insist it was vazrka, a 1000 years before that.  Of course this may be simplistic, but 'complicated' has helped so far, so why not change the approach.



Dib said:


> I don't know whether it was just a passing observation, or it has some more deep impact on your argumentation.


No, I added this for the sake of people who don't know.



Dib said:


> Can you give some evidence of existence of this opposition in Old Persian, please?


Please explain what you mean by opposition.


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## ahvalj

For some Old Persian forms we possess foreign loans. For example, Elamite _Oramašta,_ Akkadian _Uramazda_ and Greek _Ὠρομάζης:_ all the three reflect _a_ in the second root, the connecting vowel and probably the ending. The Old Persian endings, in particular, may be reflected in Elamite: _šaššam_ "power" < _xšaçam,_ _kurtaš_ "slave" < _*gr̥das_.


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> I believe, in relation to OP, and to a large extent MP,  "traditional wisdom" you refer to, is very convoluted, over analysed and complicated, however scholarly it is.



Be as it may, it is no weakness of traditional comparative linguistics unless there exists a simpler theory *with similar or higher explanatory power*.



> I can understand these techniques may be useful in cases of dead languages, but not for a language like OP, that has a living ancestor like NP, with so many common and unchanged words.



The traditional comparative linguistics works on the assumption that all languages evolve through a few reasonably well-defined processes. Those processes have been deduced by observing known instances of language evolution. If you think, they don't apply to some specific languages, it would be interesting to learn what defines that kind of languages. Having descendants certainly is not a problem, because the processes were historically deduced by observing such languages (e.g. Latin to the Romance family).



> ...a language like OP, that has a living ancestor like NP, with so many common and unchanged words. I believe to establish the pronunciation of OP and MP words, we should work backwards from NP, but also use Sanskrit and Avesta, where there's no NP equivalents.



If you can define a consistent approach to "work backwards" from *only a single language*, and validate it somehow, I am sure, it will be celebrated as a ground-breaking discovery. So far, "internal reconstruction", as it is called in the jargon, only had limited success.



> I used 'great' to show that the word has not changed , in spelling (at all), in pronunciation (a little), for at least 1776 (attested), even since 300BC (not attested)



This is simply false. The Old Persian (ca. 500 BCE) spellings are attested as w-z-r-k and w-z-r-k-a-y-a (I am writing w instead of the usual v in order to align with the MP convention). Middle Persian w-z-r-g, w-z-r-w-g (as you have quoted). New Persian b-z-r-g. So, at every phase (OP->MP/MP->NP) there is one change in consonant (k->g; w->b) and in case of OP->MP there was a loss of a whole bunch of endings from some cases. I fail to see why wu->bu (accepted by you for MP->NP) is any less conspicuous than wa->wu (proposed for OP->MP), or ṛ (probably pronounced already as [ər] in OP) -> ur.

*EDIT:* I should add my *personal* impressions here. Can we *prove* that wazṛka was the pronunciation in 500 BCE, and not wuzurk? Not really, unless we get into a time machine. But given the state of the evidence today, the u-vowels are extremely unlikely, because OP is not known to drop them from spelling. As for the final -a, if OP is an I-Ir language, it must have had it if we go back long enough (say 1000 BCE or before), but it is not known when exactly it dropped out. Though, I *tend* to think that it was still present around 500 BCE because, OP does not show any reduction of the other vowels in endings. They are always clearly spelt.



> Please explain what you mean by opposition.



I was referring to the New Persian oppositions/contrasts/distinctions of the type "dast~dasta", "šir~šira", "barg~barga", that you mentioned/alluded to:



PersoLatin said:


> I argue that it is reasonable to assume, the OP counterpart of MP wr*g* (barg, leaf), would have been v-r-k. If the assertion that <a> existed after k in vazṛka, is true, then the OP v-r-k would have been pronounced 'varka', this then present a problem, as this 'a' will clash with the Persian suffix 'a', used here in dasta (handle, bunch) & ŝira (syrup), & therefore this changes vark - leaf, to varka - barga/برگه ورقه/sheet of paper, so how would you/they distinguish between the two, varka for 'leaf' and varka for 'sheet of paper'.



I wanted to get some examples of this sort of oppositions from MP, and if possible also OP.


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## PersoLatin

We only have a few OP words to work with, so few, in comparison to MP, that we can almost ignore them, but scholars have devised so many theories based on those few. In my view, those theories get in the way of properly understanding MP, because we try to fit MP into those theories. Too much interpolation has had to be made to take out big bumps on the curve linking OP to MP, whereas the curve linking MP to NP is much much smoother. Yes the development of Latin to the Romance family has been/can be explained fully and well, using these same techniques, but there's so much data available on those languages that, theories can write themselves.



Dib said:


> Be as it may, it is no weakness of traditional comparative linguistics unless there exists a simpler theory *with similar or higher explanatory power*.


*higher explanatory power* will be here one day, soon.



Dib said:


> This is simply false. The Old Persian (ca. 500 BCE) spellings are attested as w-z-r-k and w-z-r-k-a-y-a (I am writing w instead of the usual v in order to align with the MP convention). Middle Persian w-z-r-g, w-z-r-w-g (as you have quoted). New Persian b-z-r-g. So, at every phase (OP->MP/MP->NP) there is one change in consonant (k->g; w->b) and in case of OP->MP there was a loss of a whole bunch of endings from some cases. I fail to see why wu->bu (accepted by you for MP->NP) is any less conspicuous than wa->wu (proposed for OP->MP), or ṛ (probably pronounced already as [ər] in OP) -> ur.


In my view these changes: k->g and (v)w->b, don't have much effect on the type of vowels that operated between them, anyway how do we actually know the /v/ in v-z-r-k was not really a /b/ from the start? /v/ was most probably chosen, when cuneiform was first cracked. In modern Persian, colloquially /v/ and /b/ are swapped in some words, as do /r/ and /l/, so those consonant  changes are not that radical. Examples vardâreŝ for bardâreŝ (take it), navardebun for nardebân (ladder).



Dib said:


> If you can define a consistent approach to "work backwards" from *only a single language*, and validate it somehow, ....


Two languages, in fact, NP and MP.



Dib said:


> .... I am sure, it will be celebrated as a ground-breaking discovery.


Maybe as 'ground-breaking' as accepting, the earth is round and not flat 



Dib said:


> I wanted to get some examples of this sort of oppositions from MP, and if possible also OP.


I don't know any in OP, I am sure there are some, maybe bandak but dont quote me on that. There are many in MP but they are spelt with a g/k ending (the other disputed subject), ĉeŝmag (spring), setārag, dastag, širag,  pāyag (base, station), puštag (load on the back), zardag(egg yolk), šenāsag (knowing, sense).


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## ahvalj

ahvalj said:


> The -_us_-participle in Germanic is attested in the Gothic _berusjos_ "parents" (etymologically, the Nominative Plural feminine of the Perfect participle of _bairan_ "to give birth"). In various languages it also has a parallel stem _*-ut-,_ of which Gothic knows _weitwoþs_ "witness" (_woþ_ reflects the lengthened _o_-grade, *_-u̯ōt-_).


One more Gothic remnant of the _us_-Participle: the word _jukuzi_ (jukuzi - Wiktionary) "yoke" < _*(ı̯e)-ı̯ug-us-ihₐ_ "who has yoked" (Nom. Sg. fem.; _Rix H, Kümmel M, Zehnder T, Lipp R, … · 2001 · Lexicon der indogermanischen Verben. Die Wurzeln und ihre Primärstammbildungen:_ 316).


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