Re: [tied] German "ge-" before participe perfect

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 07:54:22 +0000, ghozzis <ghozzis@...> wrote:
>
> >Hello!
> >I know that "ge-" is similar to latin "co-" and means something
> >like "with". But does anyone of you know why in German it is put

in

> >front of the participe perfect, like in "gelaufen", "gesehen" etc?
>
> Even though my German etymological dictionary explicitly denies it,

the

> connection of Germanic *ga- with PIE *k^om- as an unstressed Verner

variant

> is usually accepted. In Dutch, ge- is not prefixed to the perfect

ptc. if

> the verb already starts with an inseparable preverb (ge- itself, as

in

> geloven "believe", or be-, er-, her-, ont-, ver-) [the rule in

German is

> approximately the same, for the preverbs ge-, be-, er-, ent-, ver-,

zer-,

> emp-, miss-].
>
> The use of ge- in the perfect ptc. is similar to the use of

preverbs in

> e.g. Slavic and Georgian to denote perfective aspect. In (West)

Germanic,

> the preverb *ga- apparently became generalized as a neutral

perfective

> marker, losing any meaning of its own, and was regularly prefixed

to the

> perf. ptc., except of course in the presence of another preverb.
>
> I'm not sure why ge- is not used in the preterite.
>

Low German, like English, unlike Dutch and High German, has lost the
ppp ge-.

It is also an exception to this regularity: Germanic languages with
3rd sg. -t uses perf. ptc.'s with ge-. In Swedish (but this is
recent) and in very stylish German it is possible to leave out the
finite form of 'have' in composite tenses in subordinate clauses.
Perf. ptc. withou ge- and 3rd sg. pres. (when with -t) are similar.
You have to come up with something to distinguish them in that type
of clauses (so either get rid of the 3rd sg -t or slap ge- on to the
perf. ptc.)

Torsten