Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

On 9 May 2004 Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham@N...> wrote:

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tamas Racsko <tracsko@F...>
> >   I agree with your analysis that German (and Dutch, Yiddish, etc)
> > weak past participles is formed by circumfix.
>
> Strong past participles as well, though the latter also use ablaut.
  I thought the problem over again, maybe I was wrong when I
agreed.

  I've forget that prefixed verbs have no ge- in past participle,
e.g. schreib.en 'to write' > ge.schrieb.en 'written' vs.
ab.schreib.en 'write down, copy' > ab.schrieb.en.

  There are two possible analises:

1. Past participle ab.schrieb.en has a background form
   ab.[ge].schrieb.en (or: [ge].ab.schrieb.en) but [ge] is deleted
   because a rule prohibits the existence of two succeeding verbal
   prefixes.

2. Past participle ge.schrieb.en has a background form
   0.geschrib.en [0 = zero morpheme] but the zero prefix has a
   bodily variant ge- in past particple. (The reason could be that
   past particple describes, therefore we must explicitely use
   the semantically dummy perfective prefix ge-.)

  In case 1, the affix of past participle is circumfix, however, in
case 2 isn't. According to the latter analisis ge- makes a
perfective verb before the past participle suffix is added. It
seems to me that case 2 is better that case 1.

> We can add the Classical Greek perfect e- - [k/h]-a for roots
> starting in consonants.
[...]
> Does the Greek-Armenian-Indo-Iranian past indicative augment *e-
> also count as part of a cicumfix with the various past endings?
  I considered Greek augmentation/reduplication before my previous
posting but I refused in the end.

  I think that in the ending -K-a constituent K is a marker of the
active mood[*], since it's missing (=replaced by a zero morpheme)
in medio-passive mood, and -a is a marker of present tense, since
it's replaced by -ei in preterite, cf. pe.paideu.k.a 'I have
educated (active present)' ~ e.pe.paideu.k.ei.n 'I had educated
(active past)' ~ pe.paideu.0.mai 'I have been educated (med-pass.
present)'.

  Thus it's not a circumfix because its elements are connected to
different functions: reduplication for the perfect, K for the mood
and -a for the tense.

  [*] This K is missing after stems ending in consonant, but in
these cases the aorist marker S is also missing. Therefore they
have a bodily and a zero variant according to variuos phonotactis
situations.

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