Old Irish cuire, its congeners, and the ending of the 2nd sg. middle imperative

OLD IRISH CUIRE, ITS CONGENERS, AND THE ENDING OF THE 2ND SG. MIDDLE IMPERATIVE TIMOTHY G. BARNES* Princeton University, Department of Classics 1. The 2nd sg. imperative of fo-ceird, -cuirethar ‘puts, throws’ has two forms in Old Irish: the expected cuirthe and an apparently irregular form cuire. The form cuire has attracted very little attention, and (as we shall see) its traditional explanation does not stand up to scrutiny. From manuscripts datable to the Old Irish period we find variation between the expected cuirthe and irregular cuire: thus while at Ml. 56c5 iecta (sic) is glossed cuirthe, in the glosses on Bede tolle is glossed cuire huait at BCr 32c11 as well as in the parallel BV(i) 4b1.70. The agreement of these two manuscripts indicates that the form cuire stood in the archetype of the Bede glosses, which may have been roughly contemporaneous with Ml. The form cuire is common in later manuscripts, for example at LU 4784 (cure) and 10821 (quoted below), and persists through typically Middle Irish writings, for example at SR 1561 (cuiri, Breatnach 1994, 298). 2. The form cuire is discussed in Thurneysen GOI §589 (pp 3756) together with a group of apparent 2nd sg. imperatives ending in -e: to do-gnı́, dénae, to con-gnı́, cungne, and to do-éccai/-éicci, dé(i)cce, as well as the onceattested comainse gl. iudica (in the meaning ‘condemn’) to com-nessa-, and the likewise once-attested escse gl. intende. Thurneysen suggested (and see Pedersen VKG II 335 n. 5 for a similar suggestion) that dénae, cungne and déicce might in fact represent 2nd sg. subjunctives, ‘though stressed on the first syllable like the imperative’. The forms comainse, cuire and perhaps escse would then have been created on the analogy of these three. This account does not stand up to scrutiny. First, there is no motivation for the disappearance of the expected imperative and the compensatory employment of a jussive subjunctive to fill the void, even in the case of do-gnı́, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3318/ERIU.2015.65.3 Ériu LXV (2015) 4956 # Royal Irish Academy *A version of this paper was delivered at the 34th East Coast Indo-European Conference held in Vienna, 47 June 2015. I hereby thank Melanie Malzahn, the conference organiser; Jay Jasanoff, who provided comments on an earlier draft; Ron Kim for his comment on the occasion of the paper’s delivery; and most of all the anonymous reader and the editors of Ériu for their acuity in spotting weak points in the argument and in directing my attention to forms I had overlooked. Abbreviations of Irish MSS, texts and scholarship are given according to DIL, and those for Hittite texts (see the Appendix) according to CHD [the Chicago Hittite Dictionary]. which is the least problematic form: what would have been wrong with *dénai? Second, is it really to be expected that these subjunctives would adopt the accentual pattern of the imperative which they replace?1 Third, do-éccai is inconveniently deponent in the subjunctive, so that it cannot be assumed that a 2nd sg. active subjunctive ever existed here at all. Fourth, it is equally hard to see how the active ending should have spread to the deponent -cuirethar, and indeed even if it had, the resulting form should have been *corae.2 The first three of these four objections were made by Jasanoff in his discussion of the reflexes of the si-imperative in Old Irish (Jasanoff 1986).3 Jasanoff argued that the six irregular imperatives listed at GOI §588 (tair, -ain, tog, aic(c), at-rǽ and Middle Irish -fóir) were the Old Irish counterparts of the Vedic Sanskrit type seen in váks ˙ i ‘convey!’, yáks ˙ i ‘sacrifice!’, śrós ˙ i ‘hear!’ and the like. He noted that the same analysis could explain directly the imperatives dénae and dé(i)cce, without recourse to a subjunctive which would be subject to the first three objections canvassed above; -cce was the expected phonological outcome of *-kw eiss(i), and dénae was modelled upon it (-gnı́ never...