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

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.

Reply