Spanish clearly had a three-way "go" train wreck with [ir, yiendo] [voy, vas..] and [Fui, fueron], the latter also being part of the "be" three way wreck [ser, soy somos] [es, era, eramos ...] and [fui fuimos] And Spanish roped in a fourth verb [estar] for a different sense of "be"
Does this count as a two overlapping trainwrecks involving 6 trains? :)
For the negative imperative form of “go”: I think I discern a sense of habitual behavior that is being commented on/forbidden. E.g. if someone says “don’t go telling me that you’re too busy to help me,” that implies to me that they’re speaking to someone who often says that they’re too busy. Or perhaps that the speaker frequently encounters people, generally, telling them that they’re too busy when asked to help.
1. For the previous episode (on “come”), I commented on something John mentions in this one: how in some languages (I cited Spanish) you say “I’m going” if you are talking to someone on the phone (or in another room).
2. Stephen Jay Gould has long been one of my favorite writers — and I noticed the similarity in style and approach when I furst read McWhorter’s book “The Power of Babel,” about twenty years ago.
3. I highly recommend a book “Metaphors we Live By,” by Lakoff and Johnson, first published in the 1980s but still fresh insightful. Much of it is about how bodily entering and leaving enclosed spaces — coming and going — permeates how we express more abstract human thoughts and activities.
John suggests in passing that French and German show better obedience than English to his mother's strange demand that "I" must always "go" and never "come." But it's common in both languages to say "I'm coming" (j'arrive / ich komme).
Spanish clearly had a three-way "go" train wreck with [ir, yiendo] [voy, vas..] and [Fui, fueron], the latter also being part of the "be" three way wreck [ser, soy somos] [es, era, eramos ...] and [fui fuimos] And Spanish roped in a fourth verb [estar] for a different sense of "be"
Does this count as a two overlapping trainwrecks involving 6 trains? :)
That train wreck was partly inherited from Latin, which already was a mess in this department and with certain other common verbs.
In the classical paradigm (present 1st person sing., infinitive, past perfect 1st person sing., participle):
To be: sum, esse, fui, futurus (clearly three roots in play; plenty of obvious word origins here)
To carry: fero, feri, tuli, latus (again three roots in play -- this is the origin of the English -fere verbs and the -late words)
Notice how in Spanish the past and participle of "to be" got grafted on to "to go."
Interesting...
For the negative imperative form of “go”: I think I discern a sense of habitual behavior that is being commented on/forbidden. E.g. if someone says “don’t go telling me that you’re too busy to help me,” that implies to me that they’re speaking to someone who often says that they’re too busy. Or perhaps that the speaker frequently encounters people, generally, telling them that they’re too busy when asked to help.
1. For the previous episode (on “come”), I commented on something John mentions in this one: how in some languages (I cited Spanish) you say “I’m going” if you are talking to someone on the phone (or in another room).
2. Stephen Jay Gould has long been one of my favorite writers — and I noticed the similarity in style and approach when I furst read McWhorter’s book “The Power of Babel,” about twenty years ago.
3. I highly recommend a book “Metaphors we Live By,” by Lakoff and Johnson, first published in the 1980s but still fresh insightful. Much of it is about how bodily entering and leaving enclosed spaces — coming and going — permeates how we express more abstract human thoughts and activities.
John suggests in passing that French and German show better obedience than English to his mother's strange demand that "I" must always "go" and never "come." But it's common in both languages to say "I'm coming" (j'arrive / ich komme).