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

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]
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