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Question about Morpheme Orders in Verbs.

From:Elliott Lash <erelion12@...>
Date:Monday, January 31, 2005, 1:40
I'm trying to figure out if there are many languages
in which personal endings are not at the periphery of
the verbal complex. what I mean by this is if a verbal
complex can have a form like:

A)   1) VERB_ROOT + PERSONAL_MORPHOLOGY + TENSE/MOOD
         V+P+T

    2) TENSE/MOOD + P.MORPH + VERB_ROOT
        T+P+V

This is in distinction to the more (?) common:

B) 1) VERB_ROOT + TENSE/MOOD + PERSONAL_MORPHOLOGY
      V+T+P

   2) PERSONAL_MORPHOLOGY + TENSE/MOOD + VERB_ROOT
      P+T+V

(or some similar combo in which the personal
morphology is located at the edge of the complex, such
as T+V+P, P+V+T)

I know that Coptic has type A2 (T+P+V), are there any
others? In the case of Coptic, this type arises from
an older type that was mostly V+T+P, what happened was
that old auxiliary verbs of that form were prefixed to
a mostly unchanging root, so that [V+T+P] + [V]
became: [(V)T]+P+V, and eventually, the verbal sense
of the auxiliary was lost and the T+P+V order came
about. In forms like (A) above, is this the normal
progression?

I hope that this post made sense.

-ELLIOTT




	
		
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Kevin Athey <kevindeanathey@...>