NW vs. E Gmc

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

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

>>> 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?

Since Sean Crist was quoting me, perhaps I had better clarify.  In (at least)
German and Dutch, the meanings which once required passsive morphology with
_heissen/heten_ no longer do.  Thus we find

Er hat Meyer geheissen.  'His name was Meyer.'  (Active, or rather, unspecified
morphology; clearly intransitive.  Patient ["theme"] "Case Frame", to use a
useful expression from Case Grammar.)

Er hat mich einen Dummkopf geheissen.  'He called me an idiot.'  (Same
morphology, transitive construction because of the Agent-Patient "case Frame".)

>> 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".

One could also cite _born_, kept distince even in spelling from _borne_, the
normal participle of _bear_.

Leo Connolly

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at memphis.edu                    University of Memphis