Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

Joe scripsit:

> He's right there.  I got confused by my(Yorkshire) grandfather saying
> [In?l&v], 'in the lav' or 'in the toilet.
You know, this makes me wonder if "the" is actually the underlying
morpheme.  In the conventional written form of Yorkshire dialect, this is
written "in t'lav", as if /T/ > /t/.  But in fact the /t/ is realized as
[?], suggesting that it is underlyingly at the end of a syllable.

Perhaps what we have here is a survival of the Gmc *neuter* demonstrative,
generalized to all nouns, which surfaces as "it" in Frisian, "het" in
Dutch, and (perhaps more relevantly, given the history of Yorkshire as
part of the Danelaw) "et/ett" in Scandinavian languages.  In that case,
"in 't lav" would be a better written form.  Normative OE is Southern
and doesn't show this form with neuter nouns: instead we see 'tha:' > the.

Any takers?

> Which, in the UK, means 'in the
> bathroom', before any of you crazy americans get the wrong idea ;-)
"Lavatory" means the room here, though "toilet" means the stool.  To a
plumber, however, "lavatory" means the sink, and etymology is on his side,
from Latin "lavare" = "wash".

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves."
        --Murray Gell-Mann

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