LL-L: "Morphophonology" LOWLANDS-L, 22.MAY.2000 (04) [E]
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L O W L A N D S - L * 22.MAY.2000 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Edwin Michael Alexander [edsells at idirect.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Morphophonology" LOWLANDS-L, 22.MAY.2000 (01) [E]
At 08:37 AM 05/22/00 -0700, Iustin Churchill wrote:
> I was writing a poem for an english class where I was trying to go for
a
>somewhat archaic touch and I found myself writing "thunk" for "thought" in
>a certain line. The line fragment reads: "He thunk it a masterwork", the
>implication in context being that it really wasn't. I wasn't sure though
if
>the word even exists.
> I thought I might be getting confused by similar verbs: sink->sunk,
>fling->flung etc. Then I remembered the phrase "Who'd 've thunk it!?"
>(actualy I would pronounce it "who'd a thunk it!?".) My understanding of
>it's use is as an exclamation of surprise meaning 'no one would have
>expected that, that is a surpriseing turn of events.' Is 'thunk' here just
>a humorous intentional error, or a relic surviving in an idiom? My
Professor
>and classmates found it amusing and insisted the word doesn't exist, and I
>can't find it in my dictoinaries.
Actually, it is my theory that from "think" comes "thank", along the lines
of "fall" and "fell", in which "fell" may be the past tense or the
causative, as in "to fell a tree". Thus "thank" is "to cause to think", as
in I will remember what you did for me and perhaps pay you back". We had
this conversation several years ago here, in which Thomas Shannon wrote
(Aug 7, 1997):
>John's definition of the Germanic preterito-presents is correct, except
for
>the last part: "the past tense of a strong verb becomes the present tense
>of a new verb, *with a shift in transitivity*". As far as I'm aware,
>preterito-presents don't involve any shift in transitivity. Moreover,
they
>had nothing to do with the developments under discussion. The
>preterito-presents are verbs like wissen/weten and the modals etc., with
>the historical development noted; e.g. a verb originally meaning "I have
>seen something" took on the meaning "I know something", after which the
>verb acquired new past tense forms to replace the ones that were
>reinterpreted as present forms.
>But these preterito-present verbs did not include the verbs in question
>(legen, setzen, etc.). These latter cases are second members of pairs of
>original Germanic verbs (that's why indeed all the Germanic languages
have
>or had them). The first member of each pair was the original, underived,
>intransitive, strong verb (with so-called ablaut, that is, "irregular"
>principal parts); that's the liegen/liggen type, which is always strong.
>The other member of the pair was the "causative" counterpart of the
first,
>which was derived from the basic strong verb and was always weak (see
>below). Causatives are verbs denoting "bringing something about", so
>legen/leggen originally meant "to cause to lie". Same for pairs like
German
>sitzen/setzen, ha"ngen [strong] /ha"ngen [weak], as well as
fallen/fa"llen,
>sinken/senken, trinken/tra"nken, etc. Most of these existed at one time
in
>English too--indeed in all the Germanic languages, since they were
>inherited from the common ancestral language--but are now not always
>recognizable as such nowadays. After all, who realizes that the
historical
>causative of "drink" was "drench"?
>
>As for why the transitives in these pairs are always weak, originally in
>Germanic these causatives (which are by virtue of their meaning of course
>always transitive) were derived from the strong verb by the addition an
>ending -jan that was always created (so-called class one) weak verbs.
>That's why in these pairs the transitive verbs are all causative in
meaning
>(at least originally) and weak in conjugation (-jan had those
properties),
>while the intransitives are noncausative and strong (original underived
>strong verbs). BTW, the German verb stellen doesn't quite belong here
>because it was derived from the root which we still have in Stall, not
from
>another (strong) verb, but otherwise it's semantics and form are parallel
>to the other cases. All this has nothing to do with preterito-presents,
>which are a different, though also interesting story altogether. What
>transpired after that is another story for another day, however.
So, if I am correct, the past tense would not be "thunk". This would be
merely a false parallel, as in "If the plural of goose is geese, then why
shouldn't moose be meese?"
>Furthermore, what about the dialect word 'brung' for brought as in "Aa
>brung ya somethin"? Does it have an old history or is it a new word like
>"snuck" seams to be?
I vote for it being an alternate "strong" form of the past tense, as
opposed to the weak form which is now proper English.
Ed Alexander
JAG REALTY INC.
80 Jones Street Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8R 1Y1
Pager: 905-545-0177 Fax: 905-525-6671 Email: edsells at idirect.com
Jag Realty Inc.: http://www.deerhurst.com/jag/
Ontario Ultra Series: http://ous.kw.net/
Burlington Runners Club: http://www.deerhurst.com/brc/
----------
From: Ian James Parsley <parsley at highbury.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L: "Morphophonology" LOWLANDS-L, 22.MAY.2000 (01) [E]
Justin,
No, 'thunk' is merely formed by analogy with the verb forms you mentioned
(such as 'sunk'), but according to my research it has no historic
precedent. Nor has the form 'brung' (formed by analogy with 'sung' among
others). Both forms 'thought' and 'brought' are the historical ones, as
would
appear to be confirmed by their German cognates 'dachte' and 'brachte'
(which are consistent in the history of German), and also by the lack of
suitable cognates for 'thunk' or 'brung' in any dialect of Scots (which has
'thocht' and 'brocht').
The American form 'dove' in fact also lacks a historical precedent, and was
formed (seemingly since 1700 or so) by analogy with forms such as 'drove'.
It is an extremely rare example of a 'weak verb' (i.e. one which forms its
past forms in -t(e) or -d(e)) becoming 'strong' (i.e. one which
doesn't, usually one which forms its past forms by vowel alteration). It is
much more
common for 'strong verbs' to become 'weak' (e.g. English 'helped' which was
holpen', cf. German 'geholfen'). My undergraduate dissertation into High
German indicated 700+ strong verbs in Proto-Germanic had been reduced to
just 256-269 in modern German (the tendency is to have slightly more as you
move north - that latter may provide quite a good estimate for Low
Saxon). Modern English appears to have fewer still (I reckon around 190),
and Ulster-Scots probably even fewer (though I must admit I am constantly
revising my original estimate of 120 a few years ago upwards!)
Best wishes,
-------------------------------
Ian James Parsley
http://www.gcty.com/parsleyij
0772 0951736
"JOY - Jesus, Others, You"
----------
From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Morphophonology
Ian wrote:
> The American form 'dove' in fact also lacks a historical precedent, and
was formed (seemingly > since 1700 or so) by analogy with forms such as
'drove'. It is an extremely rare example of a 'weak > verb' (i.e. one which
forms its past forms in -t(e) or -d(e)) becoming 'strong' (i.e. one which
> doesn't, usually one which forms its past forms by vowel alteration).
What about American _sneak_ -> _snuck_ (vs non-American _sneaked_)? I've
been wondering about it.
> My undergraduate dissertation into High German indicated 700+ strong
verbs in Proto-Germanic > had been reduced to just 256-269 in modern German
(the tendency is to have slightly more as > you move north - that latter
may provide quite a good estimate for Low
> Saxon).
See a list of strong root verbs in Low Saxon/Low German (i.e., not
including forms with preposition-derived prefixes such as _fallen_ 'to
fall' -> _daalfallen_ 'to fall down') at
http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/low-saxon/strong_verbs.htm in
English and at
http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/low-saxon/starke_verben.htm in
German (starting from the homepage at
http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/low-saxon/). Conjugation of weak
verbs is explained at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1615/rhahn/low-saxon/weak_verbs.htm in
English and at
http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/low-saxon/schwache_verben.htm in
German.
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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