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--- Peter Collier <petecollier@hidden.email> wrote: > Do all the modern romance langs derive their past > participles from the > Latin -ATVS / -ATA / -ATAM etc? As far as I know. > I'm trying to consider an alternative because 'my' pp > ceases to be > distinctive very early on (I lose the final S almost > immediately, quickly > followed by the final vowel, so e.g. AMATVS > AMAT by > about the year 500 > CE...) Maybe with the auxilliary verb there too the > distinction is clear, > but I want to be able to put the pp at the end of the > clause if I can, as > with German, so I worry it becomes a little vague. Well, French gets by pretty well with "aime" (as I recall). If you don't like something like that, perhaps one of the lesser used participles could stand in? Perhaps the future passive participle? If your conlang isn't using it, perhaps it could be explained that as the original past participle was becoming uncertain, the old futre passive participle was gradually taking over the past participle role. Perhaps it could retain its future sense as well. So, amaturus > amatur. Would something like that work? Padraic > > I believe the German ge- (OHG ga-) stems originally from > PIE *kom-. The > Latin development of the same led to CVM, so maybe I'll > just use 'cu(m/n)-' > and leave it to conhistorians to puzzle over the > anachronism. > > This is getting damned tricky. I can see why the > Germanic tribes didn't > take to Latin! ;) > > -- Samlan, isa-susansilo-war-mercumo crastandus, en! mercumes-don-cr�gamando, en! mercumes-dom-resmanstaro haccru�en-fon-Mursilb�m! And now, the corpse lies limp, lo! even the body of strength, lo! even the body of Mursilb�m that slew the monster! [Erronian fragment] -- Ill Bethisad -- <http://www.bethisad.com> Come visit The World! -- <http://www.geocities.com/hawessos/> .