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Re: fallire (was: a King's proverb)

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 19, 2001, 18:42
At 11:11 am +0200 19/6/01, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>: > >> >> The development of the -oir ending of the infinitive took place _within >> French_; it was not inherited from VL. The earliest French form, in >> fact, >> is _faillir_ << VL *fallíre. The change from _fallir_ to the modern >> _falloir_ is almost certainly on analogy of _chaut_ ~ _chaloir_; _vaut_ >> ~ >> _valloir_. So _faut_ ~ _faillir_ >> _faut_ ~ _falloir_. >> > >The problem is that _faillir_ is a regular -ir verb, like finir, which gives >present participle _faillissant_, and the present "il faillit" (identical >to the >simple past, like all those -ir verbs).
Modern developments. In Old French the verb was, in fact, _faillir_ or _fallir_ or _falir_ (according to dialect), with present participle _falant_ or _faillant_. [snip]
> >> Thus from the one verb, the French have created _two_, since _faillir_ >> (>> >> Eng. _fail_) survives (tho I believe _il faut_ = "he fails" is now very >> rare); > >Not only rare, but incorrect, the correct form is "il faillit".
Yep - I got the tense wrong. I should've said something like: "became increasingly rarer with the meaning 'he fails'." In fact in Old French the present tense of this verb was as follows: 1st sing. _je fail_ or by analogy with 2n & 3rd pers _je faux_ 2nd sing. _tu fals_, _tu faus_, _tu faux_ (the latter merely orthographic variant of _faus_) 3rd sing. _il falt_, _il faut_ 1st plural _nous falons_, _nous faillons_ 2nd plural _vous falez_, _vous faillez_ 3rd plural _il(s) falent_, _il(s) faillent_ The future had a variety of competing forms: je falrai, je faldrai, je faudrai, je faur(r)ai, je faillerai, je faillirai What's happened, of course, is that the verb has split into two: _faillir_ has ironed out all the Old French irregularities and given rise to a modern -ir verb, keeping its original meaning of "to fail" (can it still have the old meaning "to lack" = manquer?). But the old irregular 3rd person singular has remained with the derived impersonal meaning: it is necessary; from the latter has developed by analogy, as I showed in my last mail, the infinitive _falloir_ which AFAIK was unknown in Old French. Such Gallic inventiveness :)
>> >> The one Italian & two French verbs are derived from VL *fallíre for the >> Classical _fallere_ (all short vowels, with stress on the initial >> syllable) >> [perfect: fefelli, supine: falsum] "to deceive, trick, cheat". There >> was a >> confusing shifting around of verbs between the Classical Latin 2nd, 3rd >> & >> 4th conjugations; nor were the shifts the same everywhere in the >> proto-Romance world. >> > >Very true. Now I have to think what *fallíre would bring in Narbonósc (and >what >meaning I will give it, Narbonósc is specialized in non-obvious semantic >shifts >:) ).
Is that so? It ought to give rise to at least two new verbs then ;)
>> Fascinating, eh? >> > >Indeed, and very educating for me. Narbonósc needs that :)
Glad to be of help. Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================

Replies

John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>