Re: [tied] Rom. fost

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2007-05-09 08:21, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Talking of Romanian, the word 'fost' "been" is curious. It cant be
> > Latin since Latin has no ppp. for 'sum',
>
> But all Romance languages have them (in nearly all cases reflecting
> *statu-).

this statement should be right.

>
> > and can't be newly
> > constructed from Latin fu-; the -st- points to a language with -

dh +

> > t- > -st-, where Latin (Germanic, Celtic) has > -ss-.
>
> It's quite obviously the preterite stem <fus-> plus the normal past
> participle suffix <-t->, just like <fãcu> 'he did' : <fãcut> 'done'.
>
> Piotr
>

that appears to be a speculation.( there is no fus+t > *fust > fost;
for "fãcu" you have "fuse" and if "fãcu+t" > "fãcut", a "fuse+t" will
give allways an "fuset", but not "fost"; here is no space to make
speculations about such reductions). Since the form with "fost" was
known already in Umbric ( I hope I am not mistaking now) then the
presence of this form in Romance should be considered as explanable.


Alex