Yet another areal feature in SA languages?

[jonathan silk]

<excerpt>Like Jpn. -te shimau, -chatta, etc. suc as in coll.
machigae-chatta "he has just now made a mistake".

</excerpt>


I am sorry I overlooked the last line of Prof. Witzel's post, in which
he has silently corrected -te shimaru. He has also alluded, again
silently, to another feature which is interesting about this
construction, in addition to its paraphrastic nature (different from OJ
-nu, which is an agglutinative feature of the verb itself), namely that
it implies a negative result; -nu does not, I believe, contain this
nuance. You cannot say *daigaku ni nyugaku shite shimatte/shchatta [*I
completely obtained entrance to the university], unless you really
don't want to go to the university. Also, by the way, I am not sure
about the "just now" aspect: For example, *jitsu wa, tegami wo
dashchatta =Actually,  I sent the letter/I did sent the letter, and I
regret it -- but I think one could answer this to the question, After
he wrote to you last week, you didn't answer him did you? I do not
think you would have had to have sent the letter within that day, for
example, as I understand the distinction in Vedic verb forms to
suggest.



Are such features as "unfortunately" possible aspects of OIA verb
aspect??

Jonathan SILK


jonathan.silk at yale.edu
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