Re: [tied] Odd(?) Low German verb inflection

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G.and.P@...> wrote:

>
> >If one believes that this weird preterite is caused by loss of the
> >preterite -d- there's no major problem. It's just that I can't see
> >what phonological conditions might have caused the loss of something
> >with so much semantic load?
>
> It happens. E.g. the loss in late Latin of the distinction between
> future and perfect, leading to a need to create new tenses for both.
> (/b/ fell with /v/, so, e.g., amabit and amavit became
> indistinguishable.)

But the change there makes phonological sense; it's not like I'm
against phonologically caused loss of morphological categories on
principle.

Perhaps it's got something to do with the spread of the dental ending
in the plural of the present. But what?


Torsten