[B-Greek] Origin of Infinitive

Arie Dirkzwager dirkzwager at pandora.be
Sun May 9 13:05:08 EDT 2004


I can only speak for what I find in my own books:

1 P. Chantraine, Morphologie historique du grec, Paris 1947, p. 326 f.
The Greek infinitive has originated before the various dialects existed.
There is no connection with infinitives in other Indo-european languages.
Concerning the fact that some people have tried to find connections with
endings of cases, Chantraine thinks that one can only establish connections
with a locative or a dative in an arbitrary way (ce n'est pas sans
arbitraire qu'on a cru reconnaître ici une forme de locatif, ou là une forme
de datif).

2 W. Brandenstein, Griechische Sprachwissenschaft II, Berlin 1959, p. 108
sees a locative in -EN. FEREIN e.g. originated from FER-E-EN. He compares
AIEN (homeric "always") with AIWN and so suggests that AIEN could be a
locative of AIWN.

Two books, two important authors, no agreement.
But perhaps others can add newer views?

Arie

Dr. A. Dirkzwager
Hoeselt, Belgium
e-mail dirkzwager at pandora.be

----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
Van: "Eddie Mishoe" <edmishoe at yahoo.com>
Aan: "B Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Verzonden: zondag 9 mei 2004 15:51
Onderwerp: [B-Greek] Origin of Infinitive


> Is this explanation generally agreed to:
>
> The so-called Infinitive Mood had its origin in the
> Dative and Locative cases of a verbal noun. LUEIN
> meant originally "for loosing" or "in loosing."
>
>
>
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