Re: Need some help with terms: was "rhotic miscellany"

Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:

> (I had exceeded my yesterday's message number, so this is already partly
> answered.)
>
> On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 12:14:53 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> wrote:
>
> >From: "Ray Brown" <ray.brown@...>
> >
> >> > Like our
> >>> "lie/lay" confusion that is fast becoming standard, alas, in the US.
> >>
> >> The confusion is quite an old one in the UK. I think if prescriptivists
> >> had not insisted on _lie_ (intrans.) ~ lay (trans.), _lay_ would have
> >> become the norm for both long ago. My parents used only _lay_, reserving
> >> _lie_ exclusively for "telling a falsehood". This seems to be common to
> >> colloquial dialect over much of Britain.
> >
> >It's an old confusion.  In early ME, or in the transition from OE to ME, I
> >believe, "lay" and "set" were established as transitive alternatives to the
> >intransitives "lie" and "sit."
>
> No, these ablaut changes must be much older. They also occur in German:
> "liegen" (from older "ligen") vs. "legen" and "sitzen" vs. "setzen",
I s'pose it's Common Germanic; Swedish has _ligga_ vs _lägga_, _sitta_ vs
_sätta_.

                                                    Andreas

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