Re: Suppletory forms
| From: | Raymond A. Brown <raybrown@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, February 18, 1999, 20:52 |
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At 10:09 pm -0500 17/2/99, Steg Belsky wrote:
>
>Well, in Yiddish the past form of _gein_, "to go", is _zain gegangen_.
>Hmm...does German (and/or other Germanic languages) use a "have"/"be" +
>past participle?
>
German uses 'sein' /zain/ "to be" + p.p. with this verb.
Formerly in English "I am gone" was used rather than the modern "I have gone."
In the spoken German of the south (and, I believe, Austria) this form,
which was originally a perfect, is now used as a preterite, the "official"
preterite being reserved there for the literary language.
In Dutch the preterite of 'gaan' (to go) is 'ik ging' (I went) and the
perfect is 'ik ben gegaan' (I have come) where the auxiliary is 'zijn'
/z@in/ "to be".
Ray.