"certain" inThe First Noel

[Dennis R. Preston]

Don't we need all of this to parse it properly?

The first Noel, the angels did say
Was to certain poor shepherds...

My "modern" gloss is

The first Noel that the angels said ("announced") was the one that
they announced to some poor shepherds laying around in a field...

For me, I guess, the entire first line (DP with NP and Rel Clause
modifier) is the subject of "was" and like

"The first test I announced was to the students in my 101 class..."

Maybe I have misapprehended this.

dInIs

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: "certain" inThe First Noel
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Aug 2, 2007, at 8:13 AM, Laurence Urdang wrote:
>
>>  As we all recall, the line in The First Noel is,
>>    Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay . . .
>>
>>    It appears to be a special aberration of mine to parse certain as
>>  a verb, since it cannot, syntactically, be anything else.
>
>OED2 for "certain", a., n., and adv.:
>
>II. 7.    a. Used to define things which the mind definitely
>individualizes or particularizes from the general mass, but which may
>be left without further indentification in description; thus often
>used to indicate that the speaker does not choose further to identify
>or specify them: in sing. = a particular, in pl. = some particular,
>some definite.
>
>with cites from the 14th century on, including the 1887 police
>notice: 'Whereas certain persons unknown did, on the night of...,
>feloniously enter...'
>
>"the first Nowell... was to certain poor shepherds" has always seemed
>to me to have this use of "certain" in it; it never occurred to me
>that there was a problem in interpretation.  (well, the use of "was
>to" here strikes modern ears as odd; but the "certain" is ok.)
>
>arnold
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
15C Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-353-4736
preston at msu.edu

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