Re: Verb Structure
| From: | Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, May 8, 2006, 18:07 |
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Chris Bates wrote:
> > >It's from Latin -tum according to Larry Trask. -du is the voiced
> > >version, used after voiced consonants.
> >
> I know next to nothing about Latin... what I used to know I've
> forgotten. What exactly did -tum mark? I'm guessing that, like the
> dictionary forms of egin etc and verbs without the Latin borrowed
> ending, it was a past, perfect and probably passive participle of
> something similar...
IIRC it was the supine (ablative -tu:, the only two cases it had); I too
have forgotten its use-- maybe purpose, '...for X-ing'? The abl. pops up in
things like "mirabile dictu".
> also, is -tum the origin of spanish -ado, -ido etc
> and similar endings in other Romance languages?
Those pretty clearly descend from the perf.pass.participle -a/tus, -i/tus.
Don't know whether the supine (uncommon, I think) was related to the PPP or
not.
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