Thanks for your interesting posting on borrowings, Richard. Without
criticising you, I'd like to add a few thoughts:
> It is interesting to note that English has borrowed very few verbs
> directly from Greek.
There are a huge number of Greek words in English, but it hadn't occurred to
me that few of them are verbs. The ones that do exist are obviously
secondary (e.g. cathetize, secondary formation; to programme, secondary
use). I shall have to look out for some ...
>[English] has borrowed the verb suffix -izein,
Also the feminine ending -ess < Greek -issa. And bunches of prefixes and
suffixes.
> voca:re ... The development from Latin
> to French is 'obscure'
ca > /Sa/ is regular in French, eg chat.
Most first conjugation verbs come into Enlgish from the supine, giving all
those words in -ate. There are also forms from the present participle
(-ant) and the gerund (-and), and the -abilis forms (-able). You can work
out if it's an -e/i- vowel or an -a- vowel in all
these -ent/ant, -end/and, -able/ible words, by remembering which conjugation
the Latin form is.
Peter