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"Ghost Verbs" | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7152 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes  7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 1 of 20 19 July 2005 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Some languages have many compound verbs which are based on non-existing verbs.
For example, the compound verbs in Catalan "admetre", "permetre", "sotmetre", "cometre" all come from the same stem. By looking at their common conjugations (which I can post if you'd like so), one can see that they all came from a base verb metre*. But this verb does not exist in Catalan, it commes from Latin "mittere". This is what I call a "ghost verb", a verb that technically does not exist in a language but which has a full conjugation, with all verbal tenses and verbal persons. Anybody knows other examples of verbs like these in other languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| amoeba Newbie Canada Joined 7111 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes | Message 2 of 20 24 July 2005 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
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In English, the verbs 'receive', 'perceive', 'deceive' and 'conceive' all seem to share a root verb 'ceive', which of course does not exist in English. It is a construction that English borrowed from Latin.
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| Kyle Groupie United States Joined 7075 days ago 49 posts - 49 votes | Message 3 of 20 27 July 2005 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Also in English, there are "produce," "reduce," and "deduce," but I have certainly never heard of the verb "to duce."
I duce You duce He/She/It duces haha It looks like a ghost verb to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7152 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 4 of 20 27 July 2005 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | ||
This one is a doubly ghost verb, it seems to me... It's spooky, I had just thought of these verbs in Spanish (producir, conducir, inducir...) and was going to post them in the forum when I saw your post... Curious :D Edited by Raistlin Majere on 27 July 2005 at 4:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| creeper Newbie Germany Joined 7149 days ago 24 posts - 23 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English | Message 5 of 20 28 July 2005 at 5:03am | IP Logged | ||
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This is creepy indeed. In French these verbs are almost the same: produire, conduire, induire. However, it seems the "purest" form appears in Spanish because these verbs are derived from the latin prepositions "pro", "cum", "in" and the verb "ducere". In Italian there are also these verbs, produce is produrre (just looked it up). Interesting phenomenon indeed.
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| jradetzky Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom geocities.com/jradet Joined 7207 days ago 521 posts - 485 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, GermanB1 | Message 6 of 20 28 July 2005 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||
Would this "duce" verb be related to "deuce" in tennis? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 20 28 July 2005 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||
No I believe that "deuce" is related to "deux" meaning that two further points are now required to win the game. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7145 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 8 of 20 28 July 2005 at 11:04am | IP Logged | ||
Good point amoeba - as I'm sure you are aware, the nouns all end with -ception i.e. perception, deception, conception, reception and 3 of the adjective forms end with -ive - i.e. perceptive, deceptive, receptive. always a good way to learn word families in English. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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