Re: isolating is equivalent to inflected

Quoting caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>:

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, João Ricardo de Mendonça
> <somnicorvus@G...> wrote:
>
> >So, for example, English "played" cannot be broken down into two
> >words play + did. You can't have words between them (compare: "He
> >will _probably_ play with us", but not * "He play probably did").
> >The fact that sometime in the past people actually spoke "He play
> >did" instead of "He played" does not affect the way current English
> >speakers analise their language.
>
> Are there some who believe that the past tense in English was formed
> in this way, _verb_ + _did_?  IIRC, a dental bound morpheme used to
> indicate past time is as old as PIE.
>
> English: played, slept
> Latin: laudatus
Well, _laudatus_ isn't strictly speaking a past tense form - it's a perfect
participle. The imperfect is _laudabam_ and the perfect is _laudavi_, without a
dental ending.

Everything I've read would indicate that the dental morpheme in Germanic pasts
and imperfects are indeed derived from a form of the auxillary "do".

                                                 Andreas

Reply