German ge- ptcpl cognates?

[Steve Gustafson]

ECOLING at aol.com writes:

> I was just recently contemplating the augment *e-
> which precedes certain completed-action verbs in
> Indic and in Greek,

Weeeell, you shouldna' be a-doin' that.  It's dangerous, y'hear?

> If not, then must one take it as an inheritance from PIE,
> lost elsewhere?

> it occurs to me to wonder about German

> ge-  of past participles,
> which (with loss of /g-/) shows up also in the "e" of the English form
> "enough", related to German "genug",
> from o-grade of a verb *nek- 'to reach, attain'.

> What is the origin of that prefix in German?

That the g- in that prefix is truly g- and not, say, an originally
Anglo-Saxon way of writing initial /y/, is shown by the German dialect
versions -kenuch- of the same word.

The conventional wisdom is that ge- (and that lingering feature of American
English, a prefixed a- before a present participle) represents *kom,
meaning -with- or -together-, here weakened in meaning to a merely intensive
role.   It does seem to be a West Germanic feature that was mostly lost in
Norse, though common enough in Anglo-Saxon and German.

It would seem to be an unlikely counterpart to the Greek and Sanskrit
augment, since that augment attaches itself to conjugated forms, not
participles.  It can, however, appear in the Gothic inflected -passive-
verbs, e.g. -gabairada- (was born) from -bairan-; but the Gothic passive at
least resembles the weak past participle, so this may not be significant.

--

Sella fictili sedeo
Versiculos dum facio.