Just checking myself on something. I am of the opinion that the verb iuvenēscō cannot be translated "I rejuvenate", since "to rejuvenate" means "to make young/youthful", while iuvenēscō seems to mean "I become youthful/young again", which seems to imply more of a passive voice, perhaps as "I am rejuvenated". Am I on the right track with respect to this?
iuvenesco
- Thread starter Michael Zwingli
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Thanks much! Sometimes I need verification of my thought processes.
Interesting! But I wouldn't call it a sort of passive. The -sc- verbs are verbs of becoming (inchoatives) but there is not necessarily an agent acting on the object or person causing the becoming. Cf. adolesco, I am growing up, becoming a grownup, but no one is doing it to me. On the other hand, the perfect participle adultus certainly seems passive! (Side note: the conjugated forms of Italian capire look as if they came from inchoative forms. Capisco is "I understand," but was it once, as it evolved from Latin, "I am starting to grasp it"?)
Originally it was so, yes. But the 'inchoative' meaning (in many irregular verbs with -sc- forms ) is lost nowadays. There are a great number of such verbs, e.g. pulire: io pulisco simply means ''I clean up/I'm cleaning up'', not ''I start to clean up''.
This is even more interesting when considering the Latin forms '-sco' derived from the homophonic Ancient Greek, where such verbal forms weren't necessarily 'incohative'.
Yes, it is. The meaning is now slightly different.
Is that a sure thing? I always thought that gignosko and cognosco were just similar, parallel forms from IE , and not one deriving from the other.
Sorry, bearded, cognoscere is not a parallel with γιγνώσκω, it is con + noscere. The reduplication of γιγ- is common in Greek (cf. e.g. πίπτειν), and crops up in Latin too, especially in perfect stems (cano, cecini, do, dedi, tango, tetigi etc). And of course the (g)no[sc]- bit is common IE (German kennen, Engl. 'know'). Time to consult Ahlavj?
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I'm aware of that. That's why I underlined the common part -gnosco. But you are right, I didn't express myself too accurately. My point is that the Latin suffix -sco is probably an independent formation, not deriving from Greek.
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Yes, -sc- is the outcome of the common Indo-European verbal suffix: -skʲ-. Wiktionary forgets Hittite, where virtually any verb had a pair with the suffix -sk- expressing an imperfective meaning (with inchoative as one of the possibilities). The Latin and Greek verbs you're discussing are both inherited: *gʲn̥hₒ-skʲ- “to recognize”. Another common verb with this suffix is *pr̥kʲ-skʲ- “to ask”.