<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Ã===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 19 July 2009 - Volume 04<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" lang="NL">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="http://uk.mc264.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sassisch@yahoo.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>
Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Morphology</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Dear Lowlanders,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Over the years we've been talking a lot about the impoverishment of morphological marking in English during its middle period of development. I suppose the rough consensus is that this happened as a result of English reassertion after the end of Norman rule. At that time, remaining speakers of Anglo-Norman (including many ethnic English people whose families had abandoned English for Norman) had to use English, the language had become infiltrated by Norman, and was taking on creolization traits. I am also wondering if the influence of speakers of Celtic languages ought to be considered, for formerly pretty much solidly Celtic-speaking areas had begun using English at least as a lingua franca.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">At any rate, while most English prefixes and suffixes were disappearing during that period, one of them did not and came to be regularized. I am talking about adverbial "-ly" ([adjective]+ly), as in soft -> softly, quick -> quickly. As you know, this is a pretty consistently applied rule, among the few exceptions being fast -> fast (He is fast - He runs fast [not *fastly]). I understand that "-ly" came from Old English </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">lÃch </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">~ </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">lÃc ~ lÃk</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> from which "like" came. In fact, in some Modern English dialects and also in Scots you can still use adverbial constructions like "greedy-like" for "greedily".</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">It is not that English had no adverbial marking before this. Old English uses mostly the </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-e</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> marking, e.g. </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">déop </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'deep' -> </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">déope </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'deeply', which can still be found in the most conservative Low Saxon dialects that retained final </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-e</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> (deyp -> deype). Sometime during the Middle English stage final </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-e</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> was dropped in pronunciation and with it adverbial </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-e</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">. Already in Old English, some adjectives required </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-lÃce</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> for adverbialization, namely </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-lÃc</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> + adverbial </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-e</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">; e.g. beald 'bold' -> </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">bealdlÃce</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> 'boldly'. Adverbial marking had already been there. It is only that </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-lÃce</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> eventually came to be applied consistently, thus making up for the lost </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-e</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The question, however, remains as to why this innovation was deemed necessary. Why was adverbial marking so important that it had to be preserved and its loss conpensated for? I am wondering if it was because of the consistent use of Norman adverbial </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">-ment </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">(e.g. </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">notoirement </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'well known', </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">grevousement </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'grievously', </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">humblement </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'humbly', </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">pleinement </i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'plainly'). Prior to that there was Scandinavian influence, and Scandinavian, too, has mandatory adverbial marking (e.g. [adjective]+</span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">t</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">). Among the Continental Germanic languages, on the other hand, adverbial marking is somewhere between weak and absent.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Information, thoughts, hunches, anyone?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Seattle, USA</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">P.S.: An excellent on-line resource for Anglo-Norman: <a href="http://www.anglo-norman.net/">http://www.anglo-norman.net/</a></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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