Re: Perfect tense and aspect

From: DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Date: Thu Sep 05 1996 - 13:55:09 EDT


Carl asked some interesting questions. I did a search of the DCB database
(L'Annee Philologizue vol. 47-58) and could only find works on the influence
of Greek on Latin. I am particularly interested in the KA endings on the -MI
verbs (since they are the oldest verbs), and can't help wondering if the
perfect came first, the aorist being a later development. Maybe someone who
has studied this recently (Carl, can you elaborate) can bring us up to date
on scholarship. In Hebrew (a non-IE language, granted) we only have the per-
fect and imperfect, and I suspect that is basically true for English as well,
mutatis mutandis.

Don Wilkins
UC Riverside



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