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

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2000 1:22 PM

> It is clear that the augment was originally separate, an adverb, and not a
> necessary and integral part of the verb, as it later became.   Homer and the
> RV both preserve forms without augment that would later require it, and
> prosodic features are certainly a factor in the choice, but these are
> syllabic, not accentual, in both Homer and RV.

> I wish to ask:
> (a) what has the fact that sigmatic aorists have an accent before the sigma
> got to do with the presence or absence of augment?   I see no connection.  I
> also seem to remember that the Greek pattern of accentuation in verbs is a
> development within Greek - RV keeps the accent further back.

> (b) where is the evidence on the correlation mentioned between asigmatic
> aorists and absence of augment?

> Peter

[Ed]

I guess this refers to an older mail of mine, which was already refuted (in
part) by others.

The main problem stemmed from the fact that I was thinking of modern Greek:

ad a) in m.Grk. the accent is normally on the augment of sigmatic aorists, if
present (depending on the person): gráphô, égrapsa. The aorist with
augment has a definite prosodic scheme TA-ta-ta (esdrújula, for the
Hispanists).

ad b) this was largely erroneous: a number of asigmatic aorists don't have an
augment. Those that have one, follow the scheme sub a).

Sorry for the confusion I caused.

Ed. Selleslagh