Re: Language Sketch: Yargish Orkish

 --- Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
>
> Substitution of phonologically unrelated forms in a
> paradigm (usually old
> synonyms) .  E.g. English go - went; also for 'go',
> Span. forms < *vadere in
> the pres., vs < *ire in the impf. and fut., and *fu-
> (!) in the
> preterit...and  Ital. < *vadere in the pres. sing.
> but <*andare everywhere
> else.  Or for that matter, Lat. 'to be', pres. and
> impf. < IE *es- vs. perf.
> < *bhu-
>
> Since na- is your plural marker, one might have
> expected some combination of
> na and ang in the lst pl, na/zdi for 2nd pl. etc.
> The roots -zur, -ja
> and -va are suppletive (apparently).
unless it's fake suppletion.

my favourite example is the lovely greek verb bló:sko:
which has the future tense molou^mai. in fact the root
is mol, which gets syncopated to mlo for the present
tense. then the vowel lengthens and has the suffix -sk
added for the present stem, plus the thematic vowel -o
and lengthening to give the first person suffix

it means 'to go'. the usual verb on the other hand is
heavily suppletive :

present: érkhomai ( stem erkh )
future: ei^mi ( actually a present form, stem i, and
provider of the present infinitive )
aorist: e^lthon ( stem elth )
perfect: elé:lutha

bn

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