Latin -rier and its Indo-Iranian congeners

Abstract

A largely overlooked equation of the Latin present passive morpheme -rier with Sabellic [fẹ:(r)] (Osc. -fír, U. -f(e)i) and further Indo-Iranian *-dhāi is discussed and defended, with new argumentation and hitherto unappreciated or ignored philological material. The history of the Indo-Iranian infinitive ending is examined afresh and reevaluated, also on the basis of much hitherto unappreciated philological material: contrary to the prevailing view, it was originally depresential rather than deradical, and probably used with derived thematic verbs. This has important ramifications for Indo-European and for the distribution of Latin -rier.

Italic

“…-dhyāi and Toch.B, Toch.A -tsi. Latin has perhaps redone the expected cognate *-diē as -rier to create its passive infinitive (see Fortson 2012;2013).…”

The Indo-European Language Family

“…-dhyāi and Toch.B, Toch.A -tsi. Latin has perhaps redone the expected cognate *-diē as -rier to create its passive infinitive (see Fortson 2012;.…”

Umbrian ⟨rs⟩ and ⟨rf⟩

“…That *[z] and *[ð] were phonetically similar to each other can be observed from the prehistory of the Latin passive infinitive morpheme -rier. According to Meiser (2003: 57) and Fortson (2012), the passive infinitive morpheme (*-dhiyē(r) >) *-ðiyē(r) changed to *-ziyē(r) (> -rier) under the influence of the active infinitive morpheme *-zi (> -re)). 28 I assume that */rs/ followed by [+voice, +consonantal] z]V. I also showed in section 2 that the descendants of *rV[z]V and *r[s$s] (> *r[s]) eventually patterned together in the prehistory of Umbrian.…”