Re: inalienable possession
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Friday, November 20, 1998, 19:13 |
Sally Caves wrote:
> Just to reverse the terms of this discussion (about postpositions becoming
> case endings)... if the verb was final, wouldn't this account for the
> number of verbs in Germanic that begin with prepositions? I'm thinking
> of that old standby
>
> Harold him with feaht
> Harold fought with him
>
> that is always invoked as an example of SOV and postposition in OE.
> Wouldn't this have given rise to the preposition/verb combination?
> withstand, undergo, etc. etc. I look at this sentence and wonder if the
> proper division is not "with fought" rather than "him with."
Quite possibly, and Germanic langs aren't the only languages with such
combinations, consider Latin _convenire_, _invenire_, etc. So, I can
imagine "Harold him with feaht" being a postposition (the only way to
confirm this would be if you could also say "Him with Harold feaht" or
some other rearranging), being re-analyzed as a prefix, so going from
"Harold him-with feaht" becoming "Harold him with-feaht", i.e., *"Harold
with-fought him"
--
"It has occured to me more than once that holy boredom is good and
sufficient reason for the invention of free will." - "Lord Leto II"
(Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert)
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