--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Ray Brown <ray.brown@F...> wrote:
> On Monday, May 10, 2004, at 12:17 PM, Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> > --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tamas Racsko <tracsko@F...>
wrote:
> [snip]
> >> I considered Greek augmentation/reduplication before my
previous
> >> posting but I refused in the end.
>
> [snip]
> >> 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.
>
> Yes, indeed - the augments, reduplication, and other
tense/voice/mood
> markers do have different functions. There's no evidence of
circumfixes as
> properly understood.
[Tamas Racsko then said, '-a is a marker of present tense'.]
> > -a- probably marks 'unmarked' past
> > (i.e. as opposed to imperfect or pluperfect) as it occurs both
in the
> > present perfect and in the aorist.
>
> I doubt that it was as systematic as that.
In which case we're back to Ce- -[h/k]-a- as a single morpheme! (At
least, as single as French ne..pas, ne..jamais etc. are. The French
examples all have a strong partial similarity, as do many of the
Austronesian examples that have been coming up.) But then,
agglutinative analysis does not work well with synthetic conjugation.
> There appears to have been a
> good deal of remodelling and analogy at work in the forms of Greek
verbs.
Very true.
> the -a- seems to have spread to other personal endings on the
analogy of
> the 1st person -a <-- /m=/.
But the 1s perfect ending comes from *-h2a, with no trace of a
nasal. (I think the crucial evidence comes from Old Irish, with
further but weak support from Latin 1s perfect -i:.) Where does the
1s -a < *[m=] come in? The aorist? In the surviving athematic
imperfects (as well as the thematic imprefects) we have 1s -n < *
[m]. At least the vowel would have got some reinforcements from 2s
*-th2a in the perfect. That may have been quite popular at one
time - it crops up outside the perfect in the form -stha in a few
places in irregular Greek conjugation.
> The 3rd singular was -e and has remained so till the present.
Which makes it difficult to see -a- as the _tense_ morpheme - but it
is the clearest marker except in the 3s!
> > How plausible a conlang would Classical Greek be?
>
> Not at all plausible - the ancient language has too many variants
and
> dialects for any one to think it was anything other than a
natlang. It's
> not to the development of the Koine that we get anything
approaching
> uniformity. The artificially Atticizing written language that
developed in
> late Koine & became the official standard in the Byzantine period
could
> claim conlang status, I guess, as could the Katharevousa of 19th &
20th
> cent intellectuals.
I meant, 'How plausible as a natlang would a conlang identical to
Classical Greek be if we didn't know Greek?'.
Richard.