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

----- 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.

Thanks,
Sally

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