El carácter temporal de la oposición infectum/perfectum y el testimonio del verbo hitita

Abstract

As is well known, the west Indo-European languages and Tocharian have a binary type of verbal flexion consisting of a present stem opposed to a past. According to the author this flexional type existed in the earliest phase of Indo-European, opposing to the present a single tense-stem similar to the Latin perfect, a stem characterized by endings of the -e/-to series. Thus the Latin perfects of the type dīxī, dēdī are not the result of contamination of a sigmatic aorist stem with a perfect stem. They are rather the continuation of an ancient Indo-European phenomenon. The study of Hittite conjugation supports the author’s thesis.