Χαίρετε
I hope this is not too far over my head: How did the future of πυνθάνομαι, πεύσομαι, end up with an epsilon in the stem?
I don’t know without looking it up, but my guess would be that it is similar to the earlier verb we had a thread on. Here the verb stem form from the aorist επυθομην is what is used for the future. πυθ + σ erodes the θ and lengthens the vowel as you’ve seen before.
I think the reason is Proto-Indo-European ablaut. The PIE root was *bʰewdʰ-. In the present, the nasal infix was added, which caused the *-e- vowel to drop out, which in turn caused the *-w- to become a *-u- vowel. In the future, the “full grade” (i.e., with the *-e- vowel) was used. Meanwhile, in the aorist, the *-e- vowel was simply dropped, again causing the appearance of a *-u- vowel. So, I think, you’d have had something like this:
Present stem *bʰwndʰ- > *bʰundʰ- > πυνθ-
Future stem *bʰewdʰs- > *bʰews- > πευσ-
Aorist stem *bʰwdʰ- > *bʰudʰ- > πυθ-
That makes more sense than my theory, which must be incorrect, especially with a word like ἡ πεύθω floating around, now that I look it up. Apparently the same root as “Buddha”!
And this is a case where Seneca’s quote from Mastronarde about verb stems actually does apply.
Menoeceus:
I think your derivations are generally correct, but as a total amateur in this area, I wonder whether the future stem πευσ- isn’t derived from the alternative form πευθομαι/πευθω, and not a proto-Indo-European (PIE) development. The sigmatic future is a Greek development, and a fairly late development, at that.
See LSJ: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dpeu%2Fqomai
Zero-grade aorist stem *bʰwdʰ- > *bʰudʰ- (and then > Greek πυθ-) would be a regular PIE aorist ablaut regularly preserved as an alternation in the Greek “strong/second” aorist.
Joel:
With regard to “Buddha”, an interesting fact: the Russian word for “awaken” is bud-it’ (будить; -it’ is the infinitive ending). An alarm clock is a razbuditel’. The Russian word is derived from the same PIE root as that reflected in Buddha and πυνθανομαι.
(Note on transcription from Russian: Apostrophes indicate palatalized consonants; consonants followed by -i- are also palatalized.)
Carrying this back even further, the Russian vowel -u- in budit’ is probably a reflex of an earlier nasalized *-õ-, which in turn would likely be a development from *-an- (and maybe an earlier vocalic *-n-?). The origin of the Russian present stem would be *pand- or *pnd-, with the PIE nasal infix, just like πυνθανομαι.
Zero grade -bd- apparently shows up in Russian bditel’nyj, “vigilant”.
But there’s no etymological relation between бдительный and vigilo? That’s surprising to me.
But there’s no etymological relation between бдительный and vigilo? That’s surprising to me.
Why? How do you get from b-d to w-g?
uigil, uigeo and uegeo are ultimately connected to a different PIE verbal root weg-, from which English “wake” is apparently derived. See OLD and Sihler, p. 44, sec. 46.1.
Zero grade -bd- apparently shows up in Russian bditel’nyj, “vigilant”.
Correction: bditel’nyj is probably from earlier bъditel’nyj, where ъ is an older short u that disappeared in modern Russian, leaving consonant clusters that look strange to English speakers (e.g., m(ъ)gnovenje, “moment”), but are not too different from consonant clusters in spoken French. It may possibly reflect a PIE zero grade, but I’m not sure.
The graphic symbol ъ has a different meaning in modern Russian.
It was just striking to me that the words sound so similar today. My first guess would have been a loan from a Romance language, if I hadn’t see the weg- article on Wiktionary. бдительный
Yes, that’s got to be right. I was playing fast-and-loose with the diachronics. *bʰews- would also have produced φευσ-. (Maybe we could say that the initial pi came from analogy with the other tense stems, but that ignores the lateness of the sigmatic future, and anyway your explanation is more parismonious.)
The normal correspondences are basically this:
PIE Grk Lat Balto-Slavic
p π p p
b β b b
bh φ~π f~b b
t τ t t
d δ d d
dh θ~τ f~b~d d
The reflexes of bh as π and dh as τ in Greek are due to Grassman’s law. PIE bh regularly becomes f initially and b medially in Latin; PIE dh regularly becomes f initially, b medially adjacent to r, l, or v, and d elsewhere.
(The table is from Sihler, although I skipped the dorsal stops.)