Re: [tied] verb agreement in one stage of English

11-10-03 03:44, Ray wrote:

> Ac hie haefdon tha¡Khiora mete genotudne
> But they had then¡Ktheir food used-up
> 'But they had then used up their food.'
>
> The sentence can be only interpreted as a perfect construction
> because something, being used up, cannot be possessed. That means
> what had been the original main verb(haefdon) was now an auxiliary
> and what had been an adjectival function(genotudne) was now the main
> verb.

Constructions with <habban>/<be:on> + pp. were of course slowly evolving
towards a conventionalised perfect construction already in Old English.
But, in OE terms, you can't claim that <notian> is gramatically the main
verb here. It's a past participle form, still inflected like an adjective.

> However, something about this sentence deserves our attention: the
> suffix is attached to the verb 'genotudn-.' That is, the main verb
> now agrees with the object 'mete' only!

No. Semantics aside, the main verb is formally <hæfdon>, and it governs
both the noun <mete> (acc. <mete>) and the pp. <genotod> (acc. <genotodne>):

But they had then [their food-ACC used-up-ACC].

The meaning is already perfect-like, but the syntax lags behind.

Piotr