# Why is the verb come missing in Slavic languages?



## Encolpius

Hello everybody, of course there are verbs for come and come back, come out, come in, come along...in Slavic languages, too....but I fail to see that languages with such fantastic and unique verbal groups especially relating moving do not have a special verbal stem for come...it is the derivate of the verb go....how come?  Thanks.


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## Christo Tamarin

Natural languages are not artificial and they do not implement any formal logic.

On the other hand, "logically", besides the neutral verb "going", we have "coming to the scene", and we have "going out of the scene" with the same neutral verb for going instead of some special verbal stem as someone might expect.

In Russian, e.g., we have many verbs based on "going/идти": "войти", "прийти", "дойти", "подойти", "отойти", "зайти", "выйти", "пройти", etc. And this is for the stem "идти". And there are another stems, too: "ходить", "ездить", "ехать", "лезть", etc.


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## rur1920

I think that is a cultural question, and cultural questions have no theoretical base to make answers. There is no "formal logic" in the question by Encolpius, but I agree with Christo that the expectation to find a pair of words for every nuance in every language is wrong. 'Verbs' are a linguistic category, usually folk don't think this way: "Wow, those are Vebs, let's do more of them!"  And no, at least in Russian variants of 'come' (there are many of them) are not derivates of 'go' (at least in modern times), it is closer to say they are derivates of 'move', even though this English approximation is still incorrect. PS: I believe there is a way to make from scratch such artificial languages that are quite natural, not like Esperanto… But this question is entirely different.


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## ahvalj

In Lithuanian, "to come" is expressed through _ateiti_ (= Old Church Slavonic _otъjiti _with the opposite meaning) as well as _prieiti_ "to come, to approach" (= OCS _prijiti_), in Prussian through _perēit_ (= OCS _prějiti, _Old East Slavic_ perejiti_); Latvian has the verb _nākt_ "to come", which corresponds to the Lithuanian _nokti_ "to ripe", and also _pieiet_ "to come, to approach" (the Latvian _atiet_, as in Slavic and in contrast to Lithuanian, means "to leave, to depart").

The IE roots *_gʷem_-/*_gʷeH₂_-, which are the source of _come, _Latin _veniō_, Tocharian _käm-/kum-/śem-_ and Armenian _ekn_, have the meaning "to go" elsewhere, e. g. Sanskrit _jigāmi/gamāmi/gacchāmi, _Lithuanian _goju_, Greek _βαίνω/βάσκω/βίβᾱμι_ and are lost in Slavic. In any case, it seems that the opposition "to come"/"to go" expressed by separate roots (e. g. *_gʷem_-/*_eı̯_-) didn't exist in PIE and has developed in separate IE branches, so Slavic simply preserves the original IE state of affairs.

Update. *_GʷeH₂_- survives in Slavic in the word _gatъ/gatь_ (<*_gʷeH₂tos/_*_gʷeH₂tis_), e. g. Russian _гать_ "paved road through a swamp or mud" (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/PlynosiosPažintinisTakas.JPG?uselang=ru).


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## rur1920

ahvalj said:


> Update. *_GʷeH₂_- survives in Slavic in the word _gatъ/gatь_ (<*_gʷeH₂tos/_*_gʷeH₂tis_), e. g. Russian _гать_ "paved road through a swamp or mud" (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/PlynosiosPažintinisTakas.JPG?uselang=ru).


Interesting. Could it be something like "easement of the path for comers (= guests)"? Do you mean that both "come" and "go" had a source that was a separate verb of motion, but their meanings were likely to be very other than the English ones? Thank you.


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## ahvalj

rur1920 said:


> Interesting. Could it be something like "easement of the path for comers (= guests)"?


Anything related to the meaning "to go": these words on -*_tis_ had a general deverbal meaning that might become more specialized with time (e. g. Russian nouns _власть/знать/честь/стать/подать/весть/мощь/печь_). In Sanskrit, the related _gātuḥ_ means "1) walking [the process]; 2) road, path; 3) place, home".

Update. I don't think that this root ever meant "to come" in Slavic: at least, in Baltic it means either "to go" (the abovementioned Lithuanian _goju, _by the way not related to the English _go _that originates from *_gʸʰeH₁-_) or serves as the Past to the undifferentiated "to come/to go" (Latvian _iet_ «идти» has the Past _gāju _«я шёл»).



rur1920 said:


> Do you mean that both "come" and "go" had a source that was a separate verb of motion, but their meanings were likely to be very other than the English ones?


We can only extrapolate to PIE the phenomena attested in the daughter languages. Since the root that has produced the English "to come" means "to go" in some other languages (see above), it probably wasn't involved in the opposition "to come"/"to go", and even if such an opposition, expressed by different roots (in contrast to adverbs), did exist in PIE at some period, we are unable to tell which roots were its members.


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## rur1920

Thank you!


ahvalj said:


> Anything related to the meaning "to go": these words on -*_tis_ had a general deverbal meaning that might become more specialized with time (e. g. Russian nouns _власть/знать/честь/стать/подать/весть/мощь/печь_). In Sanskrit, the related _gātuḥ_ means "1) walking [the process]; 2) road, path; 3) place, home".





> ... Update. I don't think that this root ever meant "to come" in Slavic: at least, in Baltic it means either "to go" (the abovementioned Lithuanian _goju_ ...


With no opposition to coming, yet with an opposition to eiti? Perhaps with some opposition of walking vs. going&coming? (_goju_ is not findable on that site, in English Wiktionary).


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## ahvalj

rur1920 said:


> With no opposition to coming, yet with an opposition to eiti? Perhaps with some opposition of walking vs. going&coming? (_goju_ is not findable on that site, in English Wiktionary).


_Goti_ is a rare verb, see here: http://www.zodynas.lt/terminu-zodynas/g/goti ; «skubiai eiti» means "to go quickly".

We know that there was a root *_eı̯_- that expressed, in particular, the movement in the most general sense (as found nowadays in Slavic and Baltic), but we can't be sure about any special meanings of it in PIE. True, in Latin (_īre_) and Gothic (_iddja_ as the Past of _gaggan_) this root means "to go" and is opposed to _venīre/qiman _"to come", but there is no evidence that such was the situation in PIE.


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## rur1920

Thank you very much! A bit like поспешать, and able to form its own "come"-variation with the prefix at-. I.e. it is also a combined go/come verb with no special meaning of "go".


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## ahvalj

Speaking of the Baltic situation, *_gʷem- _means "to be born" in Lithuanian (_gimti_) and Latvian (_dzimt_), so the meaning "to come" in this variant of the root may be PIE or at least dialectal PIE.


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## Gavril

Slavic languages seem to make relatively heavy use of verbal prefixes depending on the directional/aspectual nuances of the verb. E.g., Slovene _iti_ "go" (infinitive) vs. _*po*jdem_ "I will go", or _hoditi_ "go (on foot), walk" vs. _*pri*hajati_ "to come" (_haj-_ and _hod-_ are the same root).

Inasmuch as the "come"-vs.-"go" distinction tends to be expressed through prefixes in Slavic, perhaps this has prevented/discouraged the development of a lexical distinction between these meanings, such as seen in Eng. _come/go_, Italian _venire/andare_ and so on.


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## DarkChild

I don't understand this question. In Bulgarian " to come" is идвам or дойда, "to go" is отивам. Is this not the case in other languages?


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## rur1920

DarkChild said:


> I don't understand this question. In Bulgarian " to come" is идвам or дойда, "to go" is отивам. Is this not the case in other languages?


I suspected this to be the case, but somehow was not able to check, just didn't put enough effort into it. No, this is yet another aspect in which Bulgarian is different than "honest" Slavic languages.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> Slavic languages seem to make relatively heavy use of verbal prefixes depending on the directional/aspectual nuances of the verb. E.g., Slovene _iti_ "go" (infinitive) vs. _*po*jdem_ "I will go", or _hoditi_ "go (on foot), walk" vs. _*pri*hajati_ "to come" (_haj-_ and _hod-_ are the same root).
> 
> Inasmuch as the "come"-vs.-"go" distinction tends to be expressed through prefixes in Slavic, perhaps this has prevented/discouraged the development of a lexical distinction between these meanings, such as seen in Eng. _come/go_, Italian _venire/andare_ and so on.


All the ancient IE languages made relatively heavy use of verbal prefixes (compare Latin prefixed derivatives from _eō/īre_: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eo#Derived_terms): the modern English usage is secondary even comparing with the Old English.


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## ahvalj

DarkChild said:


> I don't understand this question. In Bulgarian " to come" is идвам or дойда, "to go" is отивам. Is this not the case in other languages?


The question was about having separate roots (with nests of derived prefixed forms) for both "to come" and "to go". I unfortunately have no volume of the Bulgarian etymological dictionary on _О_, so I can't check, but _от-и-вам_ looks like an Imperfective of the older _отъити/otъjiti_ "to depart, to leave" (_otъjiti_/**_otъjivati_ instead of the more typical Slavic _otъjiti_/_otъxoditi,_ like _otъliti/otъlivati, pobiti/pobivati, sъviti/sъvivati,_ etc.), in which case it is originally a prefixed form of the same root as _ид-вам_ and _до-йд-а_.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> All the ancient IE languages made relatively heavy use of verbal prefixes (compare Latin prefixed derivatives from _eō/īre_: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eo#Derived_terms): the modern English usage is secondary even comparing with the Old English.



Are there any statistics on the frequency of prefixed forms in Slavic vs. other IE branches? For example, Latin _ire_ and _venire_ both appear regularly on their own (as do Greek _eîmi / érkhomai /_etc.), whereas in Slovene, the roots seen in _*pri*hajati_ / _*pri*ti_ ("come") don't normally appear without a prefix.

Celtic seems relatively close to Slavic in its use of prefixes, and the Celtic languages also show a certain lack of lexical distinction between "come"/"go": Welsh _âf_ "I go" < *_agam, deuaf_ "I come" < *_*do-*agam_, Irish _téit_ "goes" vs. _*do*-téit_ "comes".


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> Are there any statistics on the frequency of prefixed forms in Slavic vs. other IE branches? For example, Latin _ire_ and _venire_ both appear regularly on their own (as do Greek _eîmi / érkhomai /_etc.),


I have never seen such statistics, but Latin, Greek, Gothic etc. dictionaries are full of prefixed verbs. The Latin peculiarity vs. Balto-Slavic is that it seldom uses _adīre_ (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/adeo) and prefers the specialized root in _venīre_ (and _advenīre_). By the way, I don't think that to have "to come" expressed by a separate root is such a natural phenomenon that the opposite requires a special explanation.



Gavril said:


> whereas in Slovene, the roots seen in _prihajati_ / _priti_ ("come") don't normally appear without a prefix.


That's the Slovene peculiarity. Russian widely uses simple verbs from both roots as did the Old Church Slavonic.



Gavril said:


> Celtic seems relatively close to Slavic in its use of prefixes, and the Celtic languages also show a certain lack of lexical distinction between "come"/"go": Welsh _âf_ "I go" < *_agam, deuaf_ "I come" < *_*do-*agam_, Irish _téit_ "goes" vs. _*do*-téit_ "comes".


The insular Celtic (especially the Old Irish) represents an extreme among IE languages: no other branch used verbal prefixes so extensively. Baltic has the prefix system largely parallel to the Slavic one (including the emerging Perfective/Imperfective aspectual distinction), though for some strange reason Lithuanian and Latvian avoid using more than one lexical prefix per verb (a limitation not found anywhere else in IE, as far as I know).


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> I have never seen such statistics, but Latin, Greek, Gothic etc. dictionaries are full of prefixed verbs. The Latin peculiarity vs. Balto-Slavic is that it seldom uses _adīre_ (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/adeo) and prefers the specialized root in _venīre_ (and _advenīre_). By the way, I don't think that to have "to come" expressed by a separate root is such a natural phenomenon that the opposite requires a special explanation.



I'm just trying to see whether there is a correlation between heavy use of directional prefixes(/affixes) on verbs and a lack of lexical distinction between "go" and "come".



> That's the Slovene peculiarity. Russian widely uses simple verbs from both roots as did the Old Church Slavonic.



I shouldn't have said that the root of _prihajati_ doesn't appear in simplex form, since _hoditi_ "walk" is from the same root. But the imperfective stem _-haj-_ usually doesn't appear unprefixed in Slovene; I'm not sure about the corresponding stem in Russian/OCS.


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## ahvalj

Let's take the standard IE root _*(H₁)eı̯_-. 

The link to the Latin prefixed verbs has been cited above (#14).

In Gothic, this root is used in the Past of _gaggan_ (http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?D1=15&H1=115&T1=gaggan). I have been able to find the following prefixed verbs: _afgaggan, afargaggan, anagaggan, atgaggan, duatgaggan, faurgaggan, faurbigaggan, fauragaggan, inngaggan, innatgaggan, miþgaggan, þairhgaggan, ufargaggan, usgaggan, ūtgaggan, ūtusgaggan_ and _wiþragaggan_.

In Greek, consider this: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?type=end&lookup=eimi&lang=greek . The list includes unfortunately both -_εἶμι_ "to go" and -_εἰμί_ " to be", but nevertheless.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> But the imperfective stem _-haj-_ usually doesn't appear unprefixed in Slovene; I'm not sure about the corresponding stem in Russian/OCS.


This is rare: _хаживать/хаждати_.


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## rur1920

ahvalj said:


> … in which case it is originally a prefixed form of the same root as _ид-вам_ and _до-йд-а_.


Whatever it is originally, the message is that Bulgarians relied on the idea of having "come" and "go" separate. So we have:
1) a developed system of verbal forms (along with the usual Slavic distinction between perfective & imperfective aspects);
2) no system of nominal cases (possession is expressed with the preposition на);
3) a definite article;
4) a distinction between "come" and "go".
The question arises naturally: what is in common among all four? It might seem, movement is movement is movement (even in English, they could use "come to" for coming and "come from" for going, departing). You perceive it the same way always: you see that someone moves, id est someone walks. So the question is, what kinds of differences should one be inclined to see (whatever the reason, influence of other languages included) in order to notice a difference between "come" and "go"? Those must be the same kinds of differences that show up in other features of the language, because they are noticed by the same people. I have no definite answer. However, I made for myself a question, whether Bulgarian differs between идти and ехать. A couple of Google lookups confirmed what I suspected: this difference is not present there.


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## Ben Jamin

I think that the very question is biased by the asumption that it is more natural to have separate root verbs, than not to have.
Has anybody an idea about the situation in other language groups (semitic, dravidian, basque, quechua, austronesian, etc, etc)? Do they have separate verb roots for go and come?


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## berndf

Semitic has a dedicated root for _come_: _b-w-'_. It can also mean _bring_ (in Hebrew distinguished by binyan: _come _in Qal and _bring_ in Hif`il; since Hif`al has generally causative semantics, _bring something_ can be understood as _cause something to come_).

PS: Arabic uses the root _g-j-' _(or_ j-y-'_, depending on transcription system) for _come/bring_. _b-w-'_ means rather _return _(i.e. _come back_) than simply _come_.


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## arielipi

בא doesn't mean return. We say חזור or בא שוב or בא בחזרה, but it's always followed with something that literally makes it a return meaning


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> בא doesn't mean return.


I said *Arabic*. The first paragraph is about the situation in Hebrew, the second paragraph (starting with "PS") about the situation in Arabic.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> The IE roots *_gʷem_-/*_gʷeH₂_-, which are the source of _come, _Latin _veniō_, Tocharian _käm-/kum-/śem-_ and Armenian _ekn_, have the meaning "to go" elsewhere.


More precisely _walk, step _(i.e. like _gehen _in the German and not like_ go _in the English) and independent of direction, could be here, could be elsewhere.


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## Ben Jamin

Note that English "go" has at least two main denotations: to "be on the move" and "to leave". The same is valid in many other langauges. In Finnish "mennä" has also the same two meanings as in English, while "tulla" means "to come". In Slavic languages it is common to use three separate verbs: to "be on the move", "come" and "to leave", all with the same root. Such triplets can be formed for all kinds of movement: walking, running, sailing, flying, swimming, driving, creeping, crawling, unspecific "move in a vehicle", and many more.


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> Note that English "go" has at least two main denotations: to "be on the move" and "to leave".


The notion of _going _doesn't even include the distinction you are making even as a concept any more (except if used in explicit opposition to _come_). And there is actually no need to. Equally I find it totally arbitrary that English and other languages single out the concept of _coming_ and exclude it from the concept of _going_. It would be equally sufficent to say _go here_ in the same manner as you say _go away_ to express the notion of_ leaving_.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> More precisely _walk, step _(i.e. like _gehen _in the German and not like_ go _in the English) and independent of direction, could be here, could be elsewhere.


Well, strictly speaking Germanic has another root, with the aspirated voiced palatovelar, _gʸʰeH₁-_ (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go#Etymology_1), though it behaves in a parallel manner and both in Germanic and in the related languages it is used to denote a range of meanings for different kinds of moving.


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## francisgranada

Ben Jamin said:


> In Finnish "mennä" has also the same two meanings as in English, while "tulla" means "to come"...


For "completeness": in Hungarian: "menni" (to go) vs. "jönni" (to come).


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Well, strictly speaking Germanic has another root, with the aspirated voiced palatovelar, _gʸʰeH₁-_ (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go#Etymology_1), though it behaves in a parallel manner and both in Germanic and in the related languages it is used to denote a range of meanings for different kinds of moving.


The original meaning of that root, the origin of_ go/gehen_, was _leave _and had indeed no traceable connotation as to the manner of leaving (except that the German reflex has the implication of using your own feet; but that might inherited from the root _*gwem-_ when the former assumed the latter's gernalized meaning). But in _*gwem-_ the connotation of_ walking, stepping_ (rather than other forms of locomotions) seems to be clear.


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## apmoy70

ahvalj said:


> ...
> The IE roots *_gʷem_-/*_gʷeH₂_-, which are the source of _come, _Latin _veniō_, Tocharian _käm-/kum-/śem-_ and Armenian _ekn_, have the meaning "to go" elsewhere, e. g. Sanskrit _jigāmi/gamāmi/gacchāmi, _Lithuanian _goju_, Greek _βαίνω/βάσκω/βίβᾱμι_ and are lost in Slavic...


Just a sidenote, the Greek v. *«βαίνω*, and its alternative forms *«βιβάσκω/βάσκω/βιβάζω»*, do not correspond exactly to the meaning of coming, but to that of going, walking/stepping out; the Greek v. for coming is the deponent *«ἔρχομαι» érkʰŏmai* (MoGr *«έρχομαι»* [ˈeɾxome]) < PIE *h₁rske- (PIE *h₁ergʰ-/*h₁er-) with possible cognate the Hitt. arške-, _to make excursions_


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## berndf

apmoy70 said:


> Just a sidenote, the Greek v. *«βαίνω*, and its alternative forms *«βιβάσκω/βάσκω/βιβάζω»*, do not correspond exactly to the meaning of coming, but to that of going; the Greek v. for coming is the deponent *«ἔρχομαι» érkʰŏmai* (MoGr *«έρχομαι»* [ˈeɾxome]) < PIE *h₁rske- (PIE *h₁ergʰ-/*h₁er-) with possible cognate the Hitt. arške-, _to make excursions_


Correct me if I am wrong. The Greek _βαίνω _also has the notion of using your own feet (rather than a vehicle), i.e. _walking, stepping_. Right?


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## apmoy70

berndf said:


> Correct me if I am wrong. The Greek _βαίνω _also has the notion of using your own feet, i.e. _walking, stepping_. Right?


Yes but I corrected almost immediately my initial post, how did you even...ah the benefits of moderation


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## berndf

apmoy70 said:


> Yes but I corrected almost immediately my initial post, how did you even...ah the benefits of moderation


Your modification an my reply must have crossed each other. Just bad luck.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> The notion of _going _doesn't even include the distinction you are making even as a concept any more (except if used in explicit opposition to _come_). And there is actually no need to. Equally I find it totally arbitrary that English and other languages single out the concept of _coming_ and exclude it from the concept of _going_. It would be equally sufficent to say _go here_ in the same manner as you say _go away_ to express the notion of_ leaving_.



And what about this?:
*From Merriam Webster dictionary on line (excerpt)*
*Definition of GO*
intransitive verb
1
*:*  to move on a course *:* proceed <_go_ slow> <_went_ by train> — compare stop
2
*:*  to move out of or away from a place expressed or implied *:* leave, depart <_went_ from school to the party> <_going_ away for vacation> 

…. and many more


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## berndf

Maybe you are right. There are more contexts that the explicit opposition to _come _where is means _leave_.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> Maybe you are right. There are more contexts that the explicit opposition to _come _where is means _leave_.


Good. For a while I was scared that my English had become too Norwegian.
Undoubtedly however, the notion of leaving in Norwegian is much stronger than in English.


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> Good. For a while I was scared that my English had became too Norwegian.
> Undoubtedly however, the notion of leaving in Norwegian is much stronger than in English.


It certainly is the _etymological _meaning of the verb, as we have already noted.


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## Gavril

Ben Jamin said:


> I think that the very question is biased by the asumption that it is more natural to have separate root verbs, than not to have.
> Has anybody an idea about the situation in other language groups (semitic, dravidian, basque, quechua, austronesian, etc, etc)? Do they have separate verb roots for go and come?



The Japanese verb 行く (iku) is usually translated as "go" and 来る (kuru) as "come". I'm not fluent enough in Japanese to assess how well these verbs overlap with the English concepts of "going" and "coming".

In Tagalog (Austronesian), the root _punta_ is often translated "go" and _dating_ as "come", but again, I'm not sure how much of an approximation this is.


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## rur1920

Ben Jamin said:


> I think that the very question is biased by the asumption that it is more natural to have separate root verbs, than not to have.
> Has anybody an idea about the situation in other language groups (semitic, dravidian, basque, quechua, austronesian, etc, etc)? Do they have separate verb roots for go and come?


I don't believe that naturality can be assessed by counting languages. Naturality is not something universal, it depends on one's kind of thinking about things. If the kind of your thinking coincides with certain usage (you follow the same reasons to notice analogies between concepts as that usage implies), then that usage is natural for you and in your assessment. With that remark made, Standard Chinese has 来 for come and 去 for go. But I don't know their etymology and exact meaning, and comparative etymology of terms for moving in different languages is what could be really interesting for the title question of the thread, I think: what happened to different kinds of root with time, that is what were their attested meanings in related languages, how their meanings might have developed, what was their difference of development among related (or conceptually similar, yet unrelated) languages, etc.


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## OBrasilo

Gavril said:
			
		

> The Japanese verb 行く (iku) is usually translated as "go" and 来る (kuru) as "come".


What's interesting is, "kuru" was originally simply "ku", something that is still seen in every other form of the verb (eg. past is kita not kurita). I think at some point the Japanese decided single-syllable verb forms were not right, and suffixed them. In this light, iku (to go) could be a suffix i- + the verb "ku". The suffix i- by itself has the meaning of going, journey. There's other seeming derivatives too. For example, to walk is aruku which seems to be a prefix aru- + -ku. The prefix aru- means walking and is also a counter for steps. I suspect originally, "ku" was simply a basic verb denoting movement, which was then prefixed to carry different meanings. The unprefixed form later gained a suffix when it was seemingly decided to avoid single-syllable verb forms (another one that got suffixed was su (to do) which became suru).


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