Re: Rs

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <cowan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2003 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: Rs


> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > Replaced by? German does still retain the infinitival _-n_ in _zu tun_
"to
> > do", but as seen still uses the preposition to. So I'd been sort of
assuming
> > this infinitival marker was inherited from the common ancestor ... am I
wrong?
>
> No, you're right.  (Or "Yes, you're right" in Japanese or Russian.  :-) )
>
> It's not quite clear whether it was a sound change or something else that
> caused English to dump essentially all its -n inflections, both infinitive
> and noun plural, at the beginning of the Modern English period.  The
> "Lyke-Wake Dirge" from the 17th century still speaks of "hosen and shoon",
> though "hose" has now become a sort of mass noun, and "shoe" has a regular
> -s plural.  Of course, "children" still survives, with an even older
> pre-OE "-r" plural buried under the -n plural, and "brethren" and "oxen"
> are still with us, though "brothers" is the normal plural and And reports
> "oxes" as increasingly common.
>
> For the Lyke-Wake Dirge, see http://www.bartleby.com/101/381.html .
> This must have a northern (Danelaw or Scottish) provenance, as shown
> by "whin" (gorse) and "brig" for "bridge".
>

Incidentally, the '-n' plural is the old Weak Masculine plural.  In OE, '-n'
was also Accusative(singular and plural), Genetive and Dative singular.  But
only in weak masculine nouns(ending in '-a').