I apologise if this reply is duplicated. I posted a reply over 12
hours ago, but there is still no sign of it.
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fortuna11111" <fortuna11111@...>
wrote:
>
> > When borrowing words directly from Latin, extracting the supine
stem
> > give a verb form where one does not have to worry about
softening 'c'
> > and 'g',
>
> Btw, Richard, I do not wish to be a nuisance, but would you
elaborate
> on this? I think I can imagine what you mean (somehow connected
with
> the phonetic relationship c, g + i, e/a, o, u in English?), and
still,
> it would be useful to hear more of an explanation.
>
> I guess this is to be found in a historical grammar of English?
I'd hope so, but I can't think of any references. Perhaps Piotr will
come up with some when he can relax from the entrance examinations.
He's the group's professional in this field. Note that when I quote
dates for English words, it is the date of the first appearance, and
that the spelling then may well have been different.
Borrowing verbs betwen distantly related heavily inflected languages
is difficult. Middle English is rather unusual in that it managed to
borrow verbs directly from Old French (possibly using the Pedersenian
mumble). German developed -ier-en from the Romance infinitive as a
sort of adapter between the Romance root and the Germanic
inflections. English has a few verbs which follow this pattern -
'render' and 'tender'.
It is interesting to note that English has borrowed very few verbs
directly from Greek. It has borrowed the verb suffix -izein, via
Latin -iza:re, and this is used to make verbs from Greek roots.
For the first conjugation verbs, the potential models for the
borrowing of Latin -c- have little resemblance to the Old French
form. An interesting set is the compounds of Latin voca:re 'call'.
Latin advoca:re 'appeal to, invoke' > OF avouer 'acknowledge as one's
own' > English avow (13th century). Onions reckons that this word
was borrowed from Latin into Old French, presumably because the vowel
looks wrong for an inherited form. A different development is seen
in Latin voca:re > OF vocher, voucher 'summon, invoke, claim' >
English vouch (14th century). The development from Latin
to French is 'obscure' - Latin *vocca:re > OF vocher or *vo:cca:re >
OF voucher are the natural development. Presumable the word was
borrowed from Latin to French late enough for /k/ to become /tS/
rather than lenite /k/ > /g/ > /G/ > 0. Finally we have Latin
invoca:re > (O)F invoquer > English invoke (15th century), with every
step a clear loan. Yet another pattern appears in Latin
pa:ca:re 'appease, pacify' > OF payer > English pay (12th century).
For the second and third conjugation verbs, an example of a simple
loan is Latin place:re 'be pleasing' > OF plaisir > English please
(14th century). This is not a very easy model to apply for loans.
Intervocalic Latin -g- should vanish or be reduced to -y-, but I
cannot think of any examples. -g- after a consonant does survive,
and we have examples such as Latin surgere 'rise' > OF sourdre,
sourge- > English surge 'source' (15th century). It is probable that
the verb was in English by that time. English 'source' is documented
earlier, and derives from the supine stem of the same verb. Latin
mergere > English merge follows this pattern.
Fourth conjugation verbs seem to have been borrowed with the
originally inchoative suffix -ish < OF -iss- < Latin -isc-, -esc-,
e.g. Middle English (14th century) fenisshe 'finish' < OF feniss- <
Latin fi:ni:re.
The development of the rule of using the supine stem seems to have
followed the route:
1) Borrow the past participle using the borrowing rules for nouns and
adjectives with suffixes. English started borrowing nouns from Latin
before Anglo-Saxons ruled in England. (I choose my words carefully;
I recall a serious suggestion that the Brigantes were Germanic rather
than Celtic!)
2) Note that this matches the stem of a frequentative verb. There
was a stage in English when verbs formed on Latin past participles
had an uninflected past participle, or at least, there was for verbs
in -ate.
3) Generalise the pattern.
Richard.