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Re: Go and come

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Tuesday, February 22, 2005, 7:03
On Monday, February 21, 2005, at 10:55 , Philip Newton wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 07:00:31 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> > wrote: >> The verb survives into modern Greek, but with only two stems: >> /erx- /'present stem' with middle voice endings. >> /erT- / 'aorist stem' with active voice endings. > > Perhaps more precisely, /erT- / ~ /elT- /, with the form with /r/ > being a more formal register and the one with /l/ more colloquial.
That really surprises me. The ancient Greek was /elth-/. One of the features of demotic is that ancient /l/ between vowel & consonant tends to be come /r/, e.g. /adelphos/ (brother) --> /aDerfos/. I would have assumed /elT-/ was Katharevousa.
> >> In modern Greek "go" is /p'jeno/ "I go" > > /pi'jeno/ (you seem to have dropped an /i/?)
Sorry - I did :=(
> >> (no infinitive in M. Greek) with aorist /'pija/ "I went". > > Well, I'd say /'piGa/,
Well, it's certainly ['piGa].
> since |g| before back vowels is [G]. Though you > could write it as /pigeno/, /piga/, since it's the same phoneme > TTBOMK, but I wouldn't use /j/ as the symbol for that single phoneme.
Yep - both [G] and [j] are allophones of the same phoneme. One could write it as /g/ as long you do not regard gamma-kappa as a single phoneme (as some do).
> > There's also /'pao/ for "to go". I'm not sure on what basis speakers > select between /pa-/ and /pigen-/ in the present. The future is always > /(Ta) 'pao/, though.
/pigen-/ indicative ~ /pa-/ subjunctive. Sorry to have been a little less than thorough with the modern Greek stuff - but it does not affect the main point of my mail: Ancient greek - same verb for 'come' and 'go' Modern Greek - two different verbs as in (I think) all western European languages. Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com =============================================== Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]