--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "aquila_grande" <aquila_grande@...>
wrote:
>
> I cannot answar defititly about Danish, but can give some
explantion
> about the use in Norwegian that have the same deponens.
>
> In Norwgian, adding an -s to an active present prticiple to give a
> passive or deponens give a result that is difficult to pronounce.
> Therefor the form *lykts is seldome used.
>
> The officially corect form used is lykkes, that is equal to
> infinitive/present. In dayly speach you can also hear lyktes, a
form
> I prefere.
>
> So- in Norwegian these deponense forms, I think, is a consequence
of
> the need to make the forms easier to prononce.
Same thing in Danish. Swedish (because they have an Academy?) is much
more well-ordered than Danish (and there Norwegian bokmål). The
Swedish supine (the form used in compound tense,
-it in strong verbs, identical to the n.sg form of the past
participle in weak verbs), I read somewhere, is a originally a
dialectal variant of the n.sg. form of the past participle in -et.
Actually the whole set-up of the passive in Swedish looks like it was
the result of languagage planning and Academy intervention, but I
have no actual evidence of that. Of the passive forms in spoken
Danish only the infinitive is used, with modal verbs: 'kan
læses' "can be read"; the present is used for the 'institutionally
habitual'(?) 'porten lukkes kl. 8' "the gate is closed at 8 o'clock
(every day)" contrasting with 'porten bliver lukket kl. 8' "the gate
is (will be) closed at 8 (today)". That means that the past passive
should be used for the 'past habitual', and how often does one need
that ('porten lukkedes kl. 8' "the gate was closed (every day) at
8")?
With deponent verbs like 'lykkes' "succeed" (constructed as if with a
dative 'det lykkedes mig at ...' "I succeeded in ...") the problem is
that we have no passive supine or ppp, therefore we try to use the
passive past, which we are also becoming unsure in the use of, since
it's used so little, therefore 'det er lykkedes mig' "I have
succeeded in...". I hear people say 'det kan lykkedes', apparently
since they can't do the analysis into -ede + -s (it took me long time
when I was a kid to figure out that 'syntes' was the past
of 'synes' "think, be of the opinion".
Another trouble deponent verb: 'findes' "exist"
Swedish: finnas, finns, fanns, har funnits
Danish: findes, findes, fandtes, har erh, hm, what?!
The periphrastic tenses are simply avoided in Danish.
I must confess to being jealous of the Swedes for having such a
logical grammar, at least on this point.
Torsten