On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 19:53:03 +0100, P&G <
petegray@...> wrote:
>Ge- comes to signify entry into an act, or completion of an act, and it is
>this completive sense that leads to its use in perfectives but not
>preterites.
That means that the use of ga- + ptc.pf.pass. postdates the development of
the PIE perfect to a Germanic plain preterit, which makes sense, since the
use of ga- in this context is not Common Germanic. As far as I know, it's
West Germanic only (not in Gothic, not in Old Norse, and it *is* present in
Old English, Old Frisian and Old Saxon, despite its loss in modern English,
modern Frisian and modern Plattdeutsch).
But is it linked to the emergence of the new periphrastic perfect ("to
have" + pf.ptc.)? For instance, in Old Dutch (Old Lower Franconian), the
participle already has ge- but the periphrastic perfect is rare. When did
the periphrastic perfect arise in Scandinavian?
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...