etymology of WANT

[Hilario De Sousa]

*sorry for cross-posting, and thanks to those (mainly Austronesianists) who have replied on the Papuan list!*

Dear Austronesianists,

Wayne Lawrence (wp.lawrence at auckland.ac.nz) is looking into
the grammaticalisatin of 'desideratives' (both lexical and
grammatical).  For instance, English «want» is
grammaticalised from an original meaning of 'lack'.  An
interesting case is the Japanese verbal suffix «-tai», which
is said to come from «itai» 'sore, hurts', via 'extremely'
(the earliest instances of -itai, in the late Heian period,
have the interpretation of 'very'.  The path SORE -->
EXTREMELY is also found in German «sehr» 'very', c.f. English
«sore»).  Do you know of any other examples of EXTREMELY -->
WANT?  The etymology of WANT in other languages would also be
hugely appreciated.

Hilário de Sousa on behalf of Wayne Lawrence
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