More language change on the fly (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 27, 2007, at 7:15 PM, Larry Horn wrote:

> At 10:11 AM -0700 8/27/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>> On Aug 27, 2007, at 9:03 AM, Bill Mullins wrote:
>>
>>> Maybe "relented" grew out of "related"?
>>
>> nice idea.  that would make it phonological at root...

> Note, though, that all the examples I cited earlier... involves
> "relented that" rather than the infinitival complement

[not infinitival, but prepositional]

> you're discussing here.  Of course "related" takes a finite
> complement too, but it lacks the concessive or reluctant nature of
> the examples I cited yesterday, and "resign", which has the right
> semantics, doesn't help with those "that" clauses either for
> syntactic reasons.  "relent to" in your bottom examples may well
> have been a refashioning of "resign to", but that still leaves
> "relent that".

i relent, i relent.  there are at least three phenomena here:

1.  {relent} as a spelling of "relate" -- in "be related to" and for
the verb-of-speaking "relate"

2.  [AZ] "relent" with a prepositional complement in "to", meaning
roughly 'resign, accept that something undesirable cannot be
avoided', in "be resigned to" and "resign oneself to"

3.  [DW, LH] "relent" with a finite-clause complement (with "that",
in the examples collected so far), meaning roughly '(reluctantly)
concede (that)'

AHD4 is typical of the dictionaries i consulted in giving
intransitive "relent" the meaning 'become more lenient,
compassionate, or forgiving', though it's easy to find uses (like
mine above) in which "relent" conveys meanings in the neighborhood of
'yield, surrender, submit, back down, give in, give up'.  (such
meanings should be in dictionaries as in current use.)

from the yielding sense of "relent" we can get to senses 2 and 3,
both of which come along with an extension into new syntactic
territory -- that of "resign to" in 2, of "concede that" in 3.

i begin to wonder how many other extensions are out there.

the verb "relent" is probably an ideal candidate for developing new
senses (and syntax): pretty much everyone will have experienced the
verb, but at such low frequencies that they might be unsure of the
details, consequently assimilating the verb to the patterns of other
verbs in the semantic domain of "relent".

arnold

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