Augment (was Re: German ge- ptcpl cognates?)

[Jim Rader]

I believe several scholars have claimed that the preverb <no-> in Old
Irish, which is obligatory with the imperfect indicative, the
secondary future, and the past subjunctive, is a functional
replacement of the augment. Of course, etymologically <no-> is clearly
unrelated to the Greek and Indo-Iranian morpheme, and it has other
functions in Old Irish, serving as a semantically empty preverb to
which infixed personal pronouns and relative markers are appended.

Jim Rader

> I remember a post from J. E. Rasmussen in a previous incarnation of this
> list arguing that the augment has left traces outside Greek, Armenian
> and Indo-Iranian. I don't remember the details and though I think that I
> archived the message, I can't find it.

>[Vidhyanath Rao]