Re: Stative/Perfect; Indo-European /r/

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

> On 05-03-02 10:43, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > We've had this discussion a long time ago on cybalist. My take

on it

> > is that the replacement of apical /r/ with uvular /R/ and of /w/
> > with /v/ is recent and caused by French influence. The reason

why it

> > didn't take place in English is the early stalemate between

French

> > and native influence in England which meant /v/ ~/w/ became a

kind

> > of shibboleth, a marker for French/non-Frenchness. That didn't
> > happen elsewhere.
>
> I don't understand. What early stalemate? Anglo-Norman French had

both

> /w/ and /v/, the former in such words as <warrant>, <wage>,

<wicket> and

> <war>. It was English that had no /v/ phoneme at the outset and
> developed it at least partly due to French influence (heavy

borrowing of

> words like <very>, <vile> and <vow>).

Which means /v/ was French to the natives, but /w/ was not
necessarily native to the Normans.

>Had the English been so
> anti-French, they would have borrowed <very> as "fery" or "wery".

After

> all, late Latin (or early Romance) versu- was borrowed as OE fers.
>

Exactly. The anti-French sentiments of the native and the anti-
natives sentiments of the Normans ended in a stalemate/modus vivendi
when the Normans had to give up their ambitions in France and
realised they could never go home and decided to go semi-native. The
French-speaking elite of Germany and the German-speaking elite in
Denmark were never placed in a similar isolated position.


Torsten