Latin perfects

[Wilmer "Xelloss" Ricciotti]

-----Original Message-----
From: Indo-European mailing list [mailto:Indo-European at xkl.com]On Behalf
Of CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU
Sent: martedl 8 giugno 1999 06:10

>Oddly, Peter Gray agreed.  Trouble is, Latin doesn't have a perfect active
>participle, or any other participle that looks like this.  Are we confusing
>the *Greek* perfect active participle?  Nah; that has a stem in -ot-.  What's
>going on?

*Classical* Latin doesn't have a perfect active participle; nevertheless
this doesn't mean that Latin never had it, and it shouldn't be much
different from *amavos or perhaps *amaus (I read somewhere that the
preposition 'apud' is a perfect active participle, neuter gender... can
anyone  confirm?). Ancient latin also had present passive participles,
which sometimes survived in fossil forms like alumnus from alo.

(greek perfect active participle has a stem in -wot- (masculine) -wos-
(neuter) or -ws- (+ -ja) (feminine))

Actually Anthony Appleyard's explanation for latin perfects in -vi/-ui
isn't bad at all: thus forms like the pluperfect 'amaveram' would come
from *amavos esam. In this case the -is-/-er- element of the perfect
tenses would come from the stem of the verb esse, captured from a
periphrastic formation. But we found this element in greek too, in
pluperfects like elely'kein < elelyk-es-m. So this element seems to be
more ancient... who can guess from where it comes?

Wilmer Ricciotti
wirix at tin.it