Re: German "ge-" before participe perfect

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

> 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?
>

Peter Skautrup: 'Det danske sprogs historie' doesn't treat that
question explicitly, but I found among his examples: 'iak ællær mini
forældræ hafa fangit af Tinni iorTo øras land' from Skånske lov,
which is based on a source in the period 1170 - 1216. This is also
one of the earliest written Danish sources, so no terminus post quem
to be deduced there.

Torsten