Mastronarde ch. 20

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swtwentyman
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Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by swtwentyman »

From the introduction to tense and aspect:

"The type of action exemplified by the left-hand column [i.e. verbs such as "to seek" as opposed to "to find"] is that expressed by the present stem; some verbs with such meanings have a present stem but no aorist stem (εἰμί, ἔρχομαι). The type of action exemplified by the right-hand column is that expressed by the aorist stem; some verbs with such meanings have an aorist stem but no present stem (εἶδον, ἦλθον), or [etc.)"

εἰμί indeed has no aorist stem/form and εἶδον no present, but the aorist of ἔρχομαι *is* ἦλθον, is it not? In the book so far he has used both forms to mean "to come/go" without distinction. I guess there can be a difference aspectually ("he is coming" or "he comes" as opposed to "he arrives" or "he begins to come") but the forms are listed as different forms of the same verb. What am I overlooking?

ed: or is this just a somewhat complicated way of pointing out that the stem ἐλθ- is not found in the present system? It's no mystery that it has aorist meanings.

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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by Qimmik »

is this just a somewhat complicated way of pointing out that the stem ἐλθ- is not found in the present system?
Yes; the present/imperfect tenses are supplied by ἔρχομαι and the future by eimi or eleusomai. This is a suppletive verb--the various aspects for this verbal idea are supplied by unrelated stems.

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jeidsath
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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by jeidsath »

Are ἔρχομαι and ἦλθον as tightly bound in usage patterns as βαίνω and ἔβην? Pretty much, I guess, although I'm sure that the picture in detail is not quite as simple as that. The LSJ article for ἔρχομαι has some interesting details.

What can be said for sure is that the words are etymologically distinct, and at some stage of the language had distinct usage patterns. They fused some time before Homer.

There's a discussion of ἔρχομαι in Suppletion und Defektivität im griechischen Verbum by Kölligan, that I have not read. Here is the review:

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007-08-20.html
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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swtwentyman
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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by swtwentyman »

Thanks to you both. Jeidsath -- my knowledge of Greek is fairly rudimentary (halfway through a beginning textbook) but from what I could understand from your link the book sounds interesting, though I know no German (curiously I recognized more verbs in the review than I might have expected, but I guess this is part of the phenomenon that the most common verbs tend to be among the most irregular/suppleted).

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calvinist
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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by calvinist »

Compare English I go/I went, which are also from two originally distinct verbs which "fused" into one, to use jeidsath's expression (because I like it :D ): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/went#English

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swtwentyman
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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by swtwentyman »

Yeah, I was familiar with the concept of suppletion, which seems to be more widespread in Greek than it is in Latin ("tollere", "ferre", and "esse" come immediately to mind but I can't think of any others off the top of my head); I was just having trouble with the statement that "ἦλθον" doesn't appear in the present, which I see now referred specifically to its stem. Just cleared that up.

ed: I found it a bit interesting that (probably coincidentally) both "ferre" and "φέρω" are suppleted.

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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by calvinist »

swtwentyman wrote:Yeah, I was familiar with the concept of suppletion, which seems to be more widespread in Greek than it is in Latin ("tollere", "ferre", and "esse" come immediately to mind but I can't think of any others off the top of my head); I was just having trouble with the statement that "ἦλθον" doesn't appear in the present, which I see now referred specifically to its stem. Just cleared that up.

ed: I found it a bit interesting that (probably coincidentally) both "ferre" and "φέρω" are suppleted.
Also interesting that fero and tollo both borrowed from the same verb/verbs: fero ferre tuli latum and tollo tollere sustuli sublatum. I think that Latin (or Proto-Italic) went through a stage of regularization where irregularities were smoothed out by reshaping verbs into more common patterns. As you've noted, the Latin verbal system is much "cleaner" compared to the Greek: no mi-verbs (but remnants like 1st person -m ending), fewer principal parts, the huge 1st conjugation which can be predicted from one form, and the relative lack of suppletion. I wouldn't be surprised if the language had more suppletive forms that were "regularized".

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swtwentyman
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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

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I read somewhere that "tuli" and "latum" are descended from "*tetuli" and "*tlatum", the original verb being related to "tollere" (obviously not that verb itself; I can't see why anyone would muddy it up by adding a prefix to perfectly good principal parts). "Tlatum" shows more ablaut than Latin would eventually have, too, being a zero-grade form.

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Re: Mastronarde ch. 20

Post by Qimmik »

Apparently, suppletion was a pervasive feature of Proto-IE and of Sanskrit, too.

In Russian, there are two aspects for most verbs: imperfective and perfective. In most cases there is an obvious relationship between the two aspects. However, in the case of the verb that corresponds etymologically to φερω/fero (and English "bear"), the aspectual pair is suppletive, too (these words mean "take"; there's a different word for "carry"):

Imperfective: infinitive - br-at'; present 1st sing. - b'er-u (the -e- is probably an epenthetic vowel; -at' and -u are the infinitive and 1st sing. endings, respectively)

Perfective: infinitive - vz'-(j)-at'; future 1st sing. - voz'-(j)mu (vz-/voz is a prefix)

The symbol ' indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant, and -j- in vz'at'/voz'mu shows up merely as palatalization of the preceding -z, not as a separate phoneme.

The full conjugation of pishu ("write", imperfective) for illustrative purposes (brat' and vz'at' with end-stress, don't illustrate the conjugation as well):

pishu
pishesh
pishet
pishem
pishete
pishut

Stress on root throughout.

Sound familiar?

Various perfectives of this verb are formed with prefixes; the root and conjugation remain the same.

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