Das Partizipium Prateriti im Tocharischen.

• Author: Kim, Ronald I.
• Position: Book review

Das Partizipium Prateriti im Tocharischen. By HARUYUKI SAITO. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ, 2006. Pp. xii + 626. [euro]98.

This monograph contains the first detailed investigation of the preterite participles (PPs) in both Tocharian languages, their semantics as well as their formal history and development from Proto-Indo-European (PIE). After an introductory chapter, in which Saito discusses the main problems and foreshadows his conclusions, chapters 2-7 examine the PPs corresponding to each of the six Tocharian preterite classes, in the standard classification of Krause and Thomas (TE I:237-54). These findings are summarized in chapter eight (SchluBfolgerungen), and chapter nine (Zusammenfassung) recapitulates and offers answers to the questions posed in the first chapter. A bibliography and indices of text passages, forms, and Tocharian verb roots close out the book.

Saito rightly observes that the PP has remained one of the most obscure formations in Tocharian. particularly with regard to its formal history and relation to the rest of the verbal system, but also because PPs to transitive verbs can have both active and passive meaning, i.e., the governed noun phrase may be either the agent or patient of the verb. This semantic peculiarity reminds one of Hittite present participles in -ant-, which are likewise diathesis-neutral (e.g., adant- 'eating, eaten', sekkant-'knowing, known'). Saito includes this as the fifth and last question in his Problemstellung (pp. 57-64, 583-86) but, unless I have missed something, he takes no stand on the antiquity or semantic development of this dual usage. It seems clear to me that the voice indifference of Tocharian PPs to transitive verbs is an archaism--like that of the Hittite present participles--and may plausibly be understood as a natural outgrowth of the earlier stative value of the PIE perfect; see further below.

This reviewer was looking forward with great anticipation to a new and updated treatment of the formal history and origins of the Tocharian PP, one that would take into account the important advances in our understanding of Tocharian historical phonology and morphology over the past generation, as well as recent debates over the reconstruction of the PIE verbal system. Unfortunately, Saito's discussion of these matters is not only imprecise and confusing, but contributes disappointingly little to either the Tocharian or PIE sides of the formal picture.

The author's synchronic treatment suffers from his failure to distinguish consistently between roots ending and not ending in PT *-a- (TB /-a-/, TA -a- ~ -a-/-[empty set]), i.e., "a-roots" and "non-a-roots" in the terminology of Hackstein (1995: 16ff.). It cannot be emphasized too strongly that this is the fundamental synchronic division of Tocharian verbal roots (cf. Ringe 1990: 402-3), and perhaps in no sphere of verbal morphology is this as apparent as in PP formation. (1)

In the introductory chapter Saito poses four questions relating to the formal development of the Tocharian PPs: 1. the origin of their endings; 2. the origin of the vowel of the reduplication syllable in PPs such as TB tetemu, TA tatmu 'born' or TB kakamau, TA kakmu '(having) carried'; 3. the root ablaut of the PPs and its prehistory; and 4. the PIE ancestor(s) of the Tocharian PP, and the relationship of the latter to the PIE and pre-PT aorist and perfect. I will consider each of these briefly in turn, summarizing Saito's presentation and the current state of knowledge, in some cases also offering my own suggestions.

As for the...