Re: Latin - English derivatives

Richard, you had sent it to me in a personal email, by mistake
probably. Thanks for taking the time to write it again. I will look
at it tomorrow.

Eva

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>
wrote:

> 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.