Re: Terkunan: rules for deriving nouns, verbs, adjectives

On 2007-10-27 Henrik Theiling wrote:
 > Another change to Terkunan I made recently is to reduce
 > the verb endings to the normal -<consonant>, -i, -u, -e
 > scheme just like the nouns and adjectives. It was quite
 > impossible to justify why all verbs have an -a ending
 > regardless of their original ending. Now, the ending is
 > thoroughly dropped completely. :-)

What about deriving the verb forms from the Latin infinitive
with loss of -R(E), but with -R preserved long enough to
prevent loss of the preceding vowel, and so the second and
fourth conjugation coming to end in -i, while the first and
third conjugation come to end in -(e).

That way the majority of past participles would become
regular by adding a -t to the verb stem if that ends in -i
and -at otherwise. It would take some analogy to make -e:re
become -i, but I don't think it's unreasonable, since
participles in -i(tus regularly become -it. The only problem

I can see is a clash with diminutives in -ITTUS -- perhaps
the productive diminutive ending of T. is -ELLUS/-ILLUS!
Verbs of the third conjugation would then by analogy adopt
the first conjugation -at ending, unless the aparticiple
ending is reanalysed as -t for them too and so both first
and third conjugation verbs add -t to -(e), practically
resulting in -et. I guess verbs with stems in -s, -r, -n and
-l may get participles in -st, -rt, -nt and -lt, but stems
in -t would have to get -tet. A participle ending -(e)t
would also make a clearer distinction between participles
and nouns in -ITATEM > -tat.

You would also get a small class of verbs in -u with
participles in -ut from verbs in -UERE. It may even get
additions from verbs with perfects in -UI.

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
   à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
   ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
   c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)

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