Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 19, 2001, 9:11
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). So we have to think of _faut_ ~ _faillir_ >> _faut_ ~ _falloir_, and then analogy would make the remaining _faut_ ~ _faillir_ >> _faillit_ ~ _faillir_. Is it possible?
> 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".
> > 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 :) ).
> > Fascinating, eh? >
Indeed, and very educating for me. Narbonósc needs that :) Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Reply

Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>