How these perfect passive participles ended up in English i.e. the “journey” they had and the “middle men” involved doesn’t matter; the technical term for that is etymology and Wiktionary is very good at telling you all that. I find it fascinating but it isn’t essential because the key point is that the spelling of the participle is still retained in the derivative. This helped me hugely when I was learning them. Every one I saw I tried to make a connection with a derivative so I would remember how the participle was written.
Here's
another “journey”: -tion, and it’s a journey with a pattern:
The
Latin suffix -tiō creates nouns from verbs, that suffix merging with the fourth
principal part. We’ll take one example after which we’ll cut out the middle
stages
[i] solvō,
solvere, solvī, ¦ solūtus [3]: untie
[ii] >
Latin noun: solūtiō, solūtiōnis [3/f]: the act of loosening /
untying
[iii]
The French language evolved from Latin, and the distinct pattern of these
derivatives is the removal of the accusative case ending of the Latin noun:
La. solūtiōn¦em
> Old French: solucion
That ends
up in Middle English as solucion, solucioun, solutyon;
English spelling during this period is unstable but by the Modern English
period -tion, most likely influenced by Latin itself but also possibly
from the later French spelling standardises this.
What
that means is that there is a large number of English derivatives in -tion that
retain the spelling of the Latin participle from which they are ultimately
derived:
cāveō,
cavēre, cāvī, cautus [2]: beware > caution
moveō,
movēre, mōvī, mōtus [2]: move > motion
agō,
agere, ēgī, āctus [3]: behave; do > action
dīcō,
dīcere, dīxī, dictus [3]: say > diction
pōnō,
pōnere, posuī, positus [3]: put > position
solvō,
solvere, solvī, solūtus [3]: untie > solution
capiō,
capere, cēpī, captus [3-iō]: capture > caption
audiō,
audīre, audīvī, audītus [4]: hear > audition
Perfect
passive participles that had a stem in -s also undergo a similar change
videō,
vidēre, vīdī, vīsus [3]: see
>
Latin noun: visiō, visiōnis [3/f]: sight; seeing
>
Old French: vision [i.e. visiōn¦em with the accusative ending removed]
>
English: vision
Again,
cut out the middle stages and see the relationship between the English noun and
the Latin participle:
mittō,
mittere, mīsī, missus [3]: send > mission
dīvidō,
dīvidere, dīvīsī, dīvīsus [3]: divide > division
No comments:
Post a Comment