From: Vincent DeCaen (decaen@epas.utoronto.ca)
Date: Thu Aug 31 1995 - 22:26:25 EDT
I'm wondering if someone can point me to literature on what I've been
calling "AUX-drop" or to examples in other languages. you get it in
Biblical Hebrew in the AUX "to be", root hyy. Hebrew otherwise makes
a binary tense/aspect contrast; but in the AUX you can get zero,
creating a three-way distinction, in which case the nonpast/imperf is
generally read as "future":
yiktob "he writes, etc"
katab "he wrote, etc"
vs.
yihye "he will be" *yihye koteb "he will be writing"
hu 0 "he is" [hu "he"] hu 0 koteb "he is writing"
haya "he was" haya koteb "he was writing"
now, what is of interest to me is the way this 3<2 distinction can
also get grammaticalized, as apparently in the Classical systems.
Latin (3s) amaa-b-(i)t amaaw-er-(i)t cf. Greek (pt) lu-s-(o)nt-
ama-0-t amaaw-0-(i)t lu-0-(o)nt-
amaa-ba-t amaaw-era-t lu-sa-nt-
< AUX *b- < AUX *er-<*es- < AUX *s- (??)
I've gotten the impression that this is not an isolated phenomenon.
Any help at all in pursuing this idea will be greatly appreciated.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:26 EDT