Morphological remodelling

David L. White dlwhite at texas.net
Thu Mar 22 03:58:22 UTC 2001


> Can anyone on the list think of examples of morphological remodelling
> within a verbal paradigm based on a single ending? The only secure example
> I have been able to come up with is the creation of new middle imperative
> endings in Greek from the basis of the second plural ending -sthe. That
> example seems to me particularly interesting because second plural forms
> are statistically the least frequent of all the personal endings
> (according to Bybee's Morphology). I'd be very interested to hear of
> similar remodellings, inside or outside IE.
>
>  Matthew McCullagh,
>  Cambridge University

        There are various cases involving the 3ps taking over, though that
is probably not what you had in mind.
        It seems to me as well that the semantic link between 2nd person and
imperative makes interference between the two not as improbable as it might
be between some other forms.

Dr. David White



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