Re: IE finite verb forms as non-finite ones

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

>
> [Full text below for people interested, though I suspect there aren't any.]
>
>
>
> >> >>Latin seems to drop markers right and left
> > >>Sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. Standard
> > >>interpretation says they're dropped, I say they're added.
>
>
>
> >> Actually, both are right.

As is apparent from the text below, you have deleted the rest of your posting.

>
>
> Torsten said:
>
> > That would have been a relevant objection if I had been trying to
> > provide an alternative analysis of Tacitus' sentence
>

With the result that I appear to have answered the first sentence in your posting, when in fact I answered all of it.

>
> Not everything is about you, Torsten.

Apart from the snide implication that I propose things for my own gratification, Peter, it is true that if I had answered only the first sentence of your posting, as you are trying to make it appear, my answer would have been irrelevantly about my own proposal. But I didn't.

> I was replying to the comment at the top.

Quote: 'but I think you're talking of ambiguity in clause structure'.

This is about my proposal, not about Latin grammar per se. In other words you were not replying solely to a point of Latin grammar, but to your at that point still confused notion of the point you thought I was making about Latin grammar. Therefore my answer was to the point on the subject of your posting and your later editing of that posting does not change that fact.

> If you want a reply to your idea that verb forms originated in
> participles, I'll make it clear that I'm discussing that idea, not
> this one.

If you want to comment on my idea that verb forms originated in
participles, which you are now fortunately able to separate from traditional analyses of Latin grammar, you can of course mark it as such if it helps you concentrate on the point. As for me, I think I'll be able to spot such a comment regardless, but thank you for your consideration.

>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com <mailto:cybalist%40yahoogroups.com> , "G&P"
> <G.and.P@> wrote:
> >
> > >Latin seems to drop markers right and left
> > >Sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. Standard
> > >interpretation says they're dropped, I say they're added.
> >
> > Actually, both are right. Classical Latin sometimes inserts clause
> > markers where the earlier language did not need them, and
> > sometimes omits them in ways that the earlier language did not.
> > But Latin is a real language. Even when markers are absent, it is
> > usually clear what the sentence structure is. It is also an
> > "architectural" language, so that linguistic ambiguity is
> > difficult to achieve. (There are overlapping forms within the
> > morphology, which are ambiguous, but I think you're talking of
> > ambiguity in clause structure.)
>
> That would have been a relevant objection if I had been trying to
> provide an alternative analysis of Tacitus' sentence in terms of
> classical Latin grammar, which would have amounted to saying that
> its dependent clause construction is syntactically ambiguous in
> Latin, but I am not, since, as I made clear in my last posting, I am
> not trying to provide an alternative analysis of Tacitus' sentence
> in terms of classical Latin grammar, but an alternative analysis of
> it as a relic of a construction that existed in PIE and earlier,
> where I think the forms of the whole mi-conjugation was originally
> non-finite, not finite forms.
>

Torsten