Re: why the -s in English verbs?

"John Atkinson" <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:aKJxj.20523$421.12055@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Helmut Richter" <hhr-m@xxxxxx> wrote...
On Tue, 26 Feb 2008, ekkilu@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Probably well-known, well-talked, but anyways. From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_verbs

"...The third person singular present indicative in English is
notable
cross-linguistically for being a morphologically marked form for a
semantically unmarked one. That is to say the third person singular
is
usually taken to be the most basic form in a given verbal category
and
as such, according to markedness theory, should have the simplest of
forms in its paradigm.

Before we discuss why the basic law

the third person singular is usually taken to be the most basic form
in
a given verbal category and as such, according to markedness theory,
should have the simplest of forms in its paradigm

is violated in the English language, we should make sure it is a law
at
all. Of the languages I know a little (which are certainly not
representative of all languages in the world), some have no
person/number
markers on verbs, most have person/number markers whose complexity is
the
same for 3rd-p/sg as for other person/number combinations, and there
are
only two languages where for one tense 3rd-p/sg is simpler, less
marked,
or otherwise more basic than others: in Hungarian indefinite present
tense
and in Hebrew perfective tense/aspect the 3rd-p/sg indeed looks less
marked than others. I doubt that there is an overwhelming evidence
across
all languages that 3rd-p/sg tends to be less marked.

I suspect the languages you know are mostly either European and Bantu
(?), which are certainly not representative of the languages of the
world in this. Even in IE, there are the modern Indo-Aryan languages
like Hindi, where 3Sg is least marked, though not by much. (It is
usually the same length as 1Sg, except that the final vowel of 1Sg is
nasalised).

You don't even have to reach as far as Hindi. Unlike 3Sg in some
other Slavic languages, like Russian, Czech 3Sg is the least marked.
In some conjugations 3Pl is also short as 3Sg.

And yes, the imperative, as suggested further below, is also
often shorter. Shorter than any present tense conjungations.

Shorter 3rd person in the past tense is even more noticeable.
It is spectacularly shorter because it completely omits the auxilliary
verb (to be) which in the past tense carries marker for person
(while the verb itself is marked for past tense and M/F/N gender).
The verbs have gender marked only in the past tense and
the masculine gender is marked by absence of any gender
marker.
pjk

My impression, based on the languages I know a little, is that the
tendency is there cross-lingistically, but it's far from "overwhelming".
In a good many languages with personal affixes or clitics, all persons
are about equally marked.

As I said before, it's generally believed that the personal affixes on
verbs are grammaticalised pronouns, and that there is a cycle,

free pronoun > clitic > affix > loss of affix due to phonetic erosion +
obligatory use of free pronouns again.

But the process is often pretty slow. In IE, for example, the first
step seems to have taken place in pre-PIE, 6000+ years ago, and the
resulting suffixes have stayed there ever since in most (not all)
branches -- only a few IE languages have got to the last stage (e.g.,
the continental Scandanavian languages; English and French are well on
the way).

Imperative could as well be a candidate for a form that is often poor
in
affixes, perhaps more often than 3rd-p/sg indicative.

Yes, my impression is that that is definitely the case, at least for the
2Sg imperative (the plural tends to be more marked; as are other persons
when they exist in the language concerned).

John.


.