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

Joe wrote:

> Joe wrote:
>
>> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>>
>>> 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_.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Looks like an i-mutation (umlaut) to me.
>>
>> 'legjan' vs. 'leggan', and 'setjan' vs 'settan', perhaps?
>>
>>
> Correction: There is umlaut involved, but it's that 'set' comes from
> 'satjan'(and lay from 'lagjan'), as can be found from Gothic (which is
> the only Germanic language, I believe, that does not have umlaut).
> Which, of course, means that it's a very, very old distinction.
>
>

Okay, I've looked into it.  'Sit' and 'Set' both come from the IE root
*sed.  'Sit' comes from a simple y-stem PG *sitjan>OE sittan > MnE sit.
However, 'set' comes from the same root, plus the IE causative suffix
'*-eyo'(cf. Sanskrit '-aya').  This suffix caused ablaut, creating the
PIE stem *sodeyo-.  In Germanic, *ei~*ey>*i ~*j was a  sound shift, so
we got PG *satjan, which, in West and North germanic, caused umlaut, so
NWG *settan>OE settan>set.  Roughly.

The same goes for 'lie'.  It comes, evidently enough, from the IE root
'*legh', undergoing the same sound shifts:

*leghyo->*ligjan>licgan>lie
*logheyo->*lagjan>lecgan>lay