Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

On Thursday, May 13, 2004, at 02:50 AM, Mark P. Line wrote:

> Richard Wordingham said:
>>
>> In English, 'and...respectively' probably is on the verge of being a
>> circumfix.
>
>
> I have a hard time imagining 'respectively' as part of an affix.
It is a wee bit hard to imagine - and I've tried very hard  ;)
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On Thursday, May 13, 2004, at 12:59 AM, Richard Wordingham also wrote:

[snip]
> Incidentally, I think you will agree that Modern Greek has a
> cicumfix.  The past indicative, both imperfective and perfective, is
> now formed by the circumfix (é-)...-a-.
Yes - but not ...-a- - the 2nd sing. is -es, and 3rd sing -e.

My understanding is that the active endings for both past tenses and for
the past perfective ('aorist') passive are: -a, -es, -e, -ame, -ate, -an(e)
The imperfective past indicative passive (which never has the augment),
however, is, I understand:
	-omoun, -osoun, -otan, -omaste, -osaste, -ontan

My own feeling is that you cannot meaningfully further separate these
endings into tense-sign + personal ending. They're simply fused, as is
often the case with fusional languages.

> The augment is either
> stressed or absent, in accordance with the rules of Classical Greek
> accentuation.
Yep - which means it may occur only in the 3 singular persons & 3rd plural
of the two active past tenses - and that only for verbs with monosyllabic
stems that do not begin with a vowel. So I'm not sure of the best analysis.
  Does one say that the past indicative active is formed with a circumfix
and that the first part of the circumfix (the 'augment') has a zero
allomorph? Or does one talk of an affix which is normally a suffix but
become a cirmcumfix in the case of the 1s, 2s, 3s & 3p of verbs with
monosyllabic perfective & imperfective stems which begin with consonants?
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On Wednesday, May 12, 2004, at 09:17 PM, Tamas Racsko wrote:

[snip]
> complement (jamais = never). Is English colloquial "ain't
> (do/say/etc) nothing" a circumfix? Is English phrase "and ...

Eh?  *"aint do nothing" just ain't English. "ain't doing nothing" does
occur in many varieties of English (the formal equivalent is: am/are/is
not doing anything).

But I utterly fail to see how "ain't....nothing" can possibly be a
circumfix. An example of a double negative, certainly - but a circumfix???

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always understood a circumfix to be an
affix which is realized as a combination of a prefix and a suffix. Certain
forms of the modern Greek past active indicatives are so marked; but "ain'
t" ain't a prefix neither is "nothing" a suffix.

Ray
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