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Re: preverbs
> Let me add to the subjective judgment (someday we'll have to assemble
> some facts!): already in classical Attic a clear distinction between
> poetic and prose usage exists regarding compounded verbs, which are
> commonly used in prose (and, presumably, on the street) and the simplex,
> or uncompounded forms which are properly used in poetry--precisely
> because they have an ARCHAIC flavor. The same is true of Latin poetry and
> prose, and it is certainly a fact of later Latin that compound verbs
> multiply and replace in common usage the simplex forms (just as
> frequentatives formed from the passive participial stem become standard
> in the first conjugation and replace old second, third, and fourth
> conjugation verbs (viso for video, canto for cano, etc.).
>
I think one question to ask is whether this is true of vernacular
language in general, or simply reflection of a more general
historical development. I believe the latter to be, true, from what I
know about the development of auxiliaries from compound verbs and
'light' verbs in other languages.
Mari Broman Olsen
Northwestern University
Department of Linguistics
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
molsen@astrid.ling.nwu.edu
molsen@babel.ling.nwu.edu
References:
- Re: preverbs
- From: Carl W Conrad <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu>