Re: PIE meaning of the Germanic dental preterit

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:31:59 -0000, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
>> Common origin requires formal homology (the historical identity of
>> "substance", not function). If one language forms periphrastic verb
>> forms using forms of *kWer- or *h1es-, another using *dHeh1-, and still
>> another one using *kap-, this indicated convergent but independent
>> development, not common origin.
>
>What about the example of Portuguese _ter_ but French _avoir_ to form
>the perfect tenses? Do not these forms have a common origin?

That's a kind of relexification. Once tener/ter takes over
the non-periphrastic uses of haber/aver (as has happened in
Spanish and Portuguese), it can gradually take over _all_
uses of haber/aver. In Spanish, this has happened with
"tener que (de)", which has largely replaced "haber de
(que)", "to have to". In Portuguese, it has gone one step
further.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...