Re: Dialect & accent (was: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton")

J. 'Mach' Wust scripsit:

> In German, at least, this verb (common in Switzerland but old-fashioned
> elsewhere) is rather of the kind of "gefallen": It requires a grammatical
> subject, but this subject isn't the experiencer, which on his part is also
> required:
Likewise in English, at least when the construction was still live, as it
is in Chaucer (14th century MidE) and even Malory (consciously archaic
15th century EModE).

I checked all the instances of "him thoughte" in Chaucer's
_Troilus and Criseyde_, and found that all but two have complement
clauses without _that_, e.g.:

	For whiche him thoughte he felt his herte blede. (502)

One has a complement clause with _that_ (note also "bifel", ModE "befell"):

	And so bifel that in his sleep him thoughte,
	That in a forest faste he welk to wepe
	For love of hir that him these peynes wroughte; (1234-36)

The last has a pronoun subject which refers to a physical object
that communicates statements, if not to a statement itself:

	This Troilus this lettre thoughte al straunge,
	Whan he it saugh, and sorwefully he sighte;
	Him thoughte it lyk a calendes of chaunge; (1632-34)

Note the normal and impersonal uses of "thoughte" in close succession.

(Note on the scansion: -e is already silent before a following vowel, or
vowel preceded by |h| -- probably silent itself in Chaucer's London
English -- but is pronounced as schwa otherwise.)

> "Erlaubt ist, was gefällt." (Licit is what pleases. [Is that one
> grammatical English?])
A little strained; "What pleases is licit" is more natural.  Almost all
English transitives have an intransitive usage like this: see
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000976.html .

Jan von Steinbergen scripsit:

> If this is the same thing as in English, the homonymy between "I
> think" and "me thinks" is nothing but coincidence. It would also
> imply that the pronoun is an accusative, not a dative.
Not coincidence, but the collapse of an old ablaut distinction.
As for accusative/dative, the dative ate the accusative long ago
in English (viz. "him"), so it's pointless to try to figure out
which is which.

--
"Your worships will perhaps be thinking         John Cowan
that it is an easy thing to blow up a dog?      http:/www.reutershealth.com
[Or] to write a book?"                          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
    --Don Quixote, Introduction                 jcowan@reutershealth.com