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

Sally Caves wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>
>
>
> I wrote:
>
>>>
>>> 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",
>> also
>> e.g. "trinken" 'drink' vs. "tränken" (older "trenken") 'make drink'
>> (cognate
>> to "drench"), "sinken" 'sink (intr.)' vs. "senken" 'sink (tr.)',
>> "hängen"
>> (older "hangen") 'hang (intr.)' vs. "henken" 'hang (tr.)'.
>
>
> You're probably right; but when did these distinctions enter the German
> language?  I'll trust your notion that they are entrenched in early Old
> English rather than emerging in late Old English, especially since we
> have
> these cognates, but I want to make sure that the distinction wasn't
> made in
> say, the tenth-century somewhere on the continent  and then spread all
> over.
> But the umlauting speaks to a very early Germanic distinction, I'll
> admit,
> as does the cognate structure.  Will have to check the Old English
> concordance and see if how early we find it in our extant literature.
>
See my numerous posts.  I researched it ;-)

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