Present Active Participle of εἰμί

Greek Learning Greek
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An old question just popped up in my mind, and it first came cross to me when I was being taught the various forms of εἰμί; it’s the apparent and inexplicable irregularity of the present active participle of εἰμί. I was using the Hansen and Quinn, but the book contained no explanation as to the origin of this alien formation, other than that it “is irregular”. The book mentions that all forms of εἰμί are built on the full grade stem ἐσ- and zero grade stem σ-.

My first thought was that the initial sigma must have dropped out from an imaginary *σών, σόντος, as they regularly do in Greek. Then my mind drifted to the lack of the spiritus asper, and then that athematic verbs have participle suffix without the theme vowel, so it couldn’t be *σών, which would imply prehistoric *σόντς.

If εἰμί were a regular athematic verb, I’d expect the participle to take the weak stem (as they do in τίθημι, as τιθέ-ντ-; ἵστημι, as ἱστά-ντ-) in σ- with the participle endings attached directly, giving rise to monstrosities *σντς, *σντός (!). If the participle marker drops out (as it does in the nominative, cf. τιθεῖς), the former becomes a more bewildering *σς.

I tried to look into Smythe for verbs like εἰμί, but apparently it is the only verb (in the active voice at least) that has a consonant stem and doesn’t take a thematic vowel.

Of course, I’m simply letting my imagination run wild on this post, because I’m no historical linguist, but I’d be interested to hear your take on the origin of the participle. I don’t believe that the Greeks simply invented a form out of thin air for εἰμί, but I can’t otherwise find any satisfactory explanation as to its etymology.

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My first thought was that the initial sigma must have dropped out from an imaginary *σών, σόντος, as they regularly do in Greek. Then my mind drifted to the lack of the spiritus asper, and then that athematic verbs have participle suffix without the theme vowel, so it couldn’t be *σών, which would imply prehistoric *σόντς.

Chantraine, Morphologie historique du grec, sec. 334 (p. 281) suggests that your explanation is correct for the Attic form, but “the expected initial aspiration disappeared by analogy with the other forms of εἰμί, which do not have aspiration.” Other dialects have, e.g., ἐών, ἐοῦσα, ἐόν from *ἐσών, with the full grade *-es, but Chantraine says that the Attic neuter ὄν shows that Attic ὤν is not a contraction from ἐών.

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But it still doesn’t explain the ὄντος in place of the expected ντός, though. Is this athematic verb alone in taking the theme vowel?

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I would guess analogy played a role here, but that’s just a guess. I really don’t know much about Greek historical linguistics, either. Sihler, A New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, suggests somewhat tentatively that the absence of rough breathing in forms of εἰμί is due to analogy.

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I’ll be trying to hunt down other consonant stem athematic verbs, if they exist at all. They may give me a clue as to how the participle of εἰμί came about. The one in my head is ἧμαι, but it isn’t conjugated in the active voice in Attic.

Would it conceivably be useful to look beyond Greek for an answer to this question? Would the same phenomena that affected the formation of ὤν have occurred in other languages?

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One thing about this verb in languages that have it: it tends to be highly irregular as a result of the clash between etymology and analogy. Greek, Latin and English are no exceptions in this regard.

The standard sources of information about historical Greek linguistics don’t seem to have entirely compelling answers.

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Right, we’re going to break this down from a PIE pov. The participles are built on either -nt- or vnt- were v represents a vowel which I’ve forgotten, probably o actually but meh I’ve passed my exams so ok.

I’m tempted to say let’s forget about the /t/ being present at the end of the nominative because of the more restrictive rules determining what can end a word post Mycenaean Greek (e.g melit > meli) but from what I recall the participle for essere in Sanskrit is san, santam so there was never a final standing t. Note also evidence for your missing aspirate since where Indic has inherited s in initial Greek ought to have h (though it’s more complicated than that). However, there’s no evidence for this in Greek and I suspect it has been a victim of analogy and leaving.

The original form might have been on and so we get ferwn where we get stem (fer) plus vowel (o) plus ending (on) = ferwn or, indeed, could have been onts. Just remember though if you’re going to investigate this you don’t just look at the present active nom masc but you need to look at the full gamut of endings. In the fem we get ousa for example.

The jist of it is, it’s just the way it is. At least from my head, maybe in the future I’ll check the books.

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Now that you mention it, I went on Wiki (!) to look at the cognates across the board in the whole family, and it appears to me that only Sanskrit (asmi, etc.) has regular inflections for this verb, not that I could think of a convincing reason for this irregular regularity.

Ah, perhaps it’s simply lost to history. :confused:

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Ah, so that indicates that the participle (if cognate with Sanskrit) ought to have taken the zero-grade root of *σ-, but the full grade ending of *όντς? If so, does it indicate that the genitive ending ought to be *οντ-ος, or the regular *ντ-ος for athematic verbs?

Also, would the absence of the final t have made a difference in the compensatory lengthening that took place later?

And the absence of any participle for sum, esse in Latin may be a clue too; perhaps I should make a similar post in the Latin forum.

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Well there is an inherited PIE pattern where the full grad is used in the nom and acc and then others tend (tend, not a rule) to use zero grade. But, again, there are problems with determing the pattern. This is a pattern usually known as hysterokinetic btw, don’t know if Wiki has somehing on that.

The Sanskrit IS cognate but the problem is there has been widespread analogy and levelling across all the daughter languages. E.g we know the original stem was nt vs ont but Sanskrit will sometimes drop the nasal e.g the gen here is AT (san, santam, satas). It’s predictable but not regular.

I don’t see how the final t could have made a difference via lengthening, at best the Greek ear could have forced it to be via analysis but even that is unlikely.

The putative PIE form btw would be

H1son (h1 = first laryngeal, the o here = long)
h1sontm. (o short, m = nasalised)
so the genitive would be -ontos in the ending

Actually the above forms should give is εων which we do get in some dialects, so there may never have been an aspiration, it’s down to the laryngeals. That makes so much more sense.

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If I interpret this correctly, does νύξ, νυκτός also belong to this pattern?

The Sanskrit IS cognate but the problem is there has been widespread analogy and levelling across all the daughter languages. E.g we know the original stem was nt vs ont but Sanskrit will sometimes drop the nasal e.g the gen here is AT (san, santam, satas). It’s predictable but not regular.

I see, thanks.

The putative PIE form btw would be

H1son (h1 = first laryngeal, the o here = long)
h1sontm. (o short, m = nasalised)
so the genitive would be -ontos in the ending

But if this pattern is of the hysterokinetic sort, wouldn’t the ending skip the intervening omicron between the stem and the participle marker, if it as you say does take the zero grade? Or perhaps I’ve misinterpreted your your statement, if the zero grade refers to the root and not the ending.

And I suppose the story is differs from that underlying ἱστάς, ἱστάντος, because this participle seemed to me to takethe zero grade in the ending, thus not ἱστάοντος.

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I’ve read up on a few sources so far, mostly regarding IE participles and Sanskrit participles, and this is what I found:

From From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic: A Linguistic History of English I read that the reconstructed IE nominative form of the participle of εἰμί is *h1sónts, and the genitive *h1sntés, agreeing with Scribo partly, about the nominative. Going forth from this form, according to 25-b Smyth, I expect Greek *σών, *σατές (or perhaps *σατός, with the Greek 3. decl. gen. ending displacing original *-és); this is quite different from how it actually turned out (ὄντος), even if I restore a hypothetical initial sigma (*σόντος).

On the other hand, Whitney’s Vedic Sanskrit grammar provides sant (gen. satas) as the cognate participle in Sanskrit, which seemed to me more congruous to the reconstructed IE form; since I don’t have any knowledge involved in the Aryan branch, I can’t decide if it is actually a direct descendant of *h1sntés or not. I hoped that A Comparative Grammar Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Sclavonic Languages, whose second volume that never appeared, would shed light on this disparity, but it doesn’t.

Examining Homer’s epic forms, ἐόν is to be seen, but since that book doesn’t* include the IE neuter form, I can’t draw any conclusion on whether ἔον is from IE or not. In any event, as Qimmik said, Attic ὄν doesn’t seem to reflect ἐόν either, which should become *οὔν after regular contraction.

Based on this, I’m inclined to say that ὤν, ὄντος doesn’t actually come from *h1sónts, *h1sntés,

Edit: actually the book does provide neuter forms – *h1sond, which doesn’t–

Perhaps the initial epsilon could be explained as part of the triple reflex in which *h1 → ἐ?

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I know close to nothing about Indo-European linguistics. But anyway…

I don’t know what “triple reflex” means, but intervocalic s is regularly dropped out, as far as I know. But the problem that we have ὄν and not *οὔν remains. Maybe you could resort to “analogy”?

Anyway, in his etymological dictionary Chantraine says the present participle of εἰμί is attested in Mycenaean, so that might be worth checking out.

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I’ve done a quick search on this online source,

http://www.scribd.com/doc/56265843/Linear-B-Lexicon

which suggests that the Mycenaean form is indeed ἐών in the nominative singular, but the genitive is not found there; the nominative plural is ἐόντες. I’ll make another post when I consult a more comprehensive source.

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Good morning, fellows.

I’ve read a couple of sources of Mycenaean Greek in my spare time at the school library. Unfortunately, most of them agree that the defective writing system prohibits further investigation of these finer nuances such as the precise declensional pattern of e-o, which may stand for something like ἐὼν or even ἐὥν. Soon I shall get my hands on a newer edition of the Great Scott, which allegedly has entries supported with evidence from this dialect. I’ll make a post when the dictionary arrives.