NW vs. E Gmc

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean Crist" <kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 4:08 PM

[snip]

>> The Gothic passive (actually, a PIE middle formation) has West
>> Germanic parallels, such as OE _ha:tte_ 'is named' (cf. Gothic
>> _haitada_), contrasting with active _ha:tT_ (T = thorn) 'calls'
>> (Gothic. _haitiT_).

[Ed Selleslagh]

In Du. 'heten' and Ger. 'heissen' (Eng. be called, named, bear a name, Fr.
s'appeler) the verb seems active, intransitive, but in Du. the past participle
'geheten' has a transitive meaning, or a passive one (called so and so by
somebody else, having received a name). This is rather confusing to me : could
you clarify?

> It's true that an old passive form is fossilized here, but the speakers of
> OE and OHG almost certainly considered this word to be a separate lexical
> item in its own right.  A similar case: most speakers of modern English
> probably consider "forlorn" a separate lexical item and are completely
> unaware that the word contains a fossilized old past participle of "lose".

[Ed]

Wasn't the verb 'forlose'?

FYI: In Du. the verb 'to lose' is still 'verliezen (verlieren in some
dialects), ik verlies, ik verloor, ik heb verloren'. 'I am lost' = 'Ik ben
verloren'.

>Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)

Ed.