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From: tesielin@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Todd Sieling)
Subject: Help With Gothic Formative
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Date: Fri, 28 Oct 1994 01:35:09 GMT
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	I am having trouble understanding the application of the agentive
formative -areis in Gothic and how it came about. According to the OED,
weak verbs formed with the suffix -jan stood related in sense to agentive
nouns. It goes on to say that "Thus, by analogy..." the -areis suffix was
applied to form agent nouns. Does this mean that -areis was the suffix
marking a noun (possibly derived from a verb), and that -areis became an
agentive formative because of the -jan formations' relation, in sense,
to agent nouns? I'm freakin' out trying to understand this, so any help
would be greatly appreciated.
TES

