--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> >
> > > > What's an 'active impersonal'?
> >
> > > One which can take a direct object.
> >
> > Don't they all? AFAIK they do in Finnish and Estonian. That's
> > more or less equivalent to demanding the impersonal should exist
> > for transitive verbs too.
>
> Passive impersonals don't. We can say "Romam ventum est" but here
> <Romam> is not a transitive direct object.
Well, 'vengo:' is intransitive, so that's not so strange.
> In my theory, Oscan <lamatir> is a pres. subj. act. impersonal, not
> a perf. subj. pass. one. The big difficulty is <esuf> in the
> Tabula Bantina, which is commonly rendered 'ipse'. If I can't
> regard it as an accusative, I don't have much of a theory left.
A little too few details for me to evaluate that one.
Anyway, a few quotes from
Tiit-Rein Viitso
3 Fennic, in
Abondolo(ed.) The Uralic Languages
'Corresponding to the six forms that make up the personal voice there was an impersonal voice in proto-Fennic. From a transformational perspective, we could say that a predicate verb in any of the three persons, singular or plural, could be replaced by a special impersonal form that contained (1) the impersonal suffix *-tA- or *-ttA-, (2) an imperfect or a mood suffix and, (3) in the indicative and the imperative, the ending *-sen. The corresponding nominal or infinitive subject was simultaneously removed. Such impersonalization is still possible in all tenses and moods in all Fennic languages except Livonian, e.g. Estonian kaks me:est maGavaD kontserDil 'two men are sleeping at the concert' >> kontserDil maGattakse 'one sleeps at the concert'. Note that in the latter case the sentence has no formal subject. Võru Estonian also has a passive: a transitive clause with the predicate verb in a personal form of the present or imperfect indicative can be made passive by transforming the object into a subject and replacing the active predicate verb with the corresponding passive verb. The s3 passive forms are homophonous with the corresponding impersonal forms, while other forms have the usual endings.
...
Non-finite Form Categories
Proto-Fennic had four participles: the present personal in *-pA, the preterite personal in *-nUt, the present impersonal in *-tApA/*-ttApA, and the preterite impersonal in *-tU/*-ttU. Participles occurred as attributes, as predicatives, and as components of composite perfect and pluperfect forms built with the present and imperfect forms of the auxiliary verb 'is'. In Livonian the impersonal participles have become passive participles. Participles are inflected as nominals. In several dialects the preterite participle suffixes have contaminated one other: there has been either loss of the final *t of the personal participle or a spread of this *t to the impersonal participle. Infinitives built with the suffix *-tAk served as both subjects and objects. All Fennic dialects have at least one gerund built with the suffix *-tesnA (originally the inessive of the infinitive) that functions as an adverbial indicating a simultaneous action. Supines are verbal adverbs, formed by means of the suffix*-mA- plus a case suffix, e.g. illative *-mAsen, inessive *-mAsnA, ablative *-mAstA, translative *-mAksi, abessive *-mAttAk.'
Torsten