Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

At 1:04 pm -0800 9/3/99, Sally Caves wrote:
>John Cowan wrote:
>
>> As for Welsh and English, Tolkien's article on the subject pointed
>> out the curious use, in both OE and OW (MW?), of two verbs
>> for "be" (present tense), one normal (am, eart, ist, and all that),
>> one future/consuetudinal (using the "b-" stem).  The verbs
>> themselves, of course, are inherited, but the grammatical use
>> of them is neatly parallel.  The other Gmc languages do not
>> have this.  Likewise the be + ing progressive is English-only
>> among the Gmc languages, but the Celtic languages all (?) have it.
>
>Nwetis cebodel...(immensely captivating)
>Caves
>Suppletive forms, of course, for the copula abound in many IE
>languages. And does Celtic really have an -ing that corresponds
>to OE -and? Yr wyf i yn tynnu y trol, "I pull/am pulling the cart."
>W. uses the verb noun in such constructions, not a present
>participle.  "I am in pulling (gerund)."
Nor did English use the present participle!

The older form was: "I am a-pulling"  = *I am on pulling.  The prefixed a-
is a watered down form of 'on'.  These forms in many dialects use "of"
before the diect object, _not_ in a partitive sense but to join one noun
(the verb-noun) to the another noun (the object), e.g. "He was a-pulling of
the cart."

These forms were still current in some parts of Britain until the first
part of this century.

>Are you (or Tolkien)
>in suggesting that the E. use of  "am pulling" is in deriving  from
>the Welsh?
Sometime since I read Tolkien on this, but it does seem inconceivable to me
that on the same small island two peoples developed almost word for word
parallel constructions quite independently.  Who copied whom is another
matter.  But the existence of expressions like 'estoy tirando' in Spanish &
'sto tirando' in Italian (from Latin 'stare' + ablative of the _gerund_)
suggest that Roman Britain might be a starting place.

But the other point John reminds us is that the Old English division of the
verb "to be" into two parallel sets of tenses etc, one lot beginning with
b- and the other being rather more irregular, is uncannily like the
Brittonic system where b- tends to denote habitual states/ actions, and the
other forms are the "then and now" words - rydw i'n yn yscrifennu - I'm
writing (now) ~ bydda i'n yn ysgrifennu - I (habitually) write.    In
earlier forms of English there was a difference between: "I am
a-writing..." [now] and "I be a-writing..." [as a something I do every day].

Tolkien does attribute this Old English development, which AFAIK was unique
among the Germanic languages and is now, alas, lost - to Brittonic
influence.
--------------------------------------------------------

And at 2:15 pm -0500 9/3/99, Brian Betty wrote:
......
>The issue is where the unGermanic use of the gerund in English (ie. a lot,
>and in ways it isn't used in other Gmc languages) is, to use Sanskrit,
>svabhava (self-produced, self-so) or because of influence from unrelated
>languages (ie. an areal form)? Well, it's a little suspicious that Gaelic
>and Welsh/Brittonic all use the gerund in the same unusual manner.
>
>And it is this, plus the coincidence of b- forms in the suppletive, that
>made Tolkien & Co. raise their collective eyebrows - for good reason, I
>think.
I agree - for good reason, indeed.

Ray.