LL-L "Grammar" 2003.02.27 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Allison Turner-hansen <athansen at arches.uga.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2003.02.26 (04) [E]

Ron wrote:
> As far as I am aware, outside official prescription (i.e., Standard
English)
> phrases like "I lay me/myself down" and "sit you/yourself down" are as old
> as the hills. You can find them preserved not only in various dialects but
> also in songs that go back a long way. Off the top of my head I remember
> "Sit you down, dear companions, sit you down for a while" in some old
Irish
> mariners' song, and in Scots "A'd lee/lay me doun/doon an dee" ("I'd lay
me
> down and die" ... in a well-known song, but I forgot which one).* This is,
> of course, echoed not only in Scots but also in other languages and thus
> seems to be a "natural" process: transitive verb with a pronoun as the
> object. We find it in German (_Bitte setzen Sie sich!_ "please sit
> you(rself)!" = 'Please take a seat!', _Ich setze mich hin/nieder_ 'I sit
me
> down', _Leg' dich hin/nieder_ 'Lay you down' = 'Lie down') and Lowlands
> Saxon (Low German, _Sett di daal!_ 'Sit you down', besides _Gah sitten_
"go
> to sit" = 'Take a seat', _Ik legg mi maal up 't Ohr_ "I lay me once on the
> ear" = 'I'll have a lie-down', 'I'll have a nap'). It's also most common
in
> Romance languages. The beginning of an old Portuguese ballad comes to
mind:
> _Senta-te aqui, o Antonio, senta-te aqui ao meu lado nesta cadeirinha
nova!_
> 'Sit (you(rself)) here, o Antonio, sit (you(rself)) here by my side on
this
> new little stool!'

>
> *P.S.: I remember the song now, retrieved from the depth of memory from my
> teen years (written here in the usual Anglicized orthography):
>
> ANNIE LAURIE
>
> Maxwellton braes are bonnie,
> Where early fa's the dew,
> An' it's there that Annie Laurie
> Gi'ed me her promise true,
> Gi'ed me her promise true,
> Which ne'er forgot will be,
> And for bonnie Annie Laurie,
> I'd lay me doon an' dee.
>
> Her brow is like the snowdrift,
> Her neck is like the swan,
> Her face it is the fairest
> That e'er the sun shone on.
> That e'er the sun shone on,
> And dark blue is her eye,
> But for bonnie Annie Laurie,
> I'd lay me doon an' dee.
>
> Like dew on the gowan lying,
> Is the fa' o' her fairy feet;
> An' like winds in a summer sighin',
> Her voice is low an' sweet,
> Her voice is low an sweet,
> An' she's a' the world to me,
> And for bonnie Annie Laurie,
> I'd lay me doon and

Dear Ron/Lowlanders,
I do agree that the use of reflexive expressions has been around
a long time- since Old English days, I believe.  I was partly talking
about non-standard forms entering the standard language, and since some of
them are archaic retentions, I probably shouldn't have lumped them with
bona fide language change.
However, I was talking about a distinction between the
intransitives and the causative/transitives, not about refexives.  Your
examples, "lay me down" (from that beautiful song- thanks for reminding me
of it) and High German "setzen Sie sich"  do preserve this distinction,
since both verbs are supposed to take an object, and they
in fact have the required object.  My example "sit yourself down"
indicates loss of distinction because it has "sit", not "set", and thus
should not take an object.   It would correspond to German "*sitzen Sie
sich", which most speakers would reject.  Your example "Sit you down, dear
companions" is in fact an example of just this, so you got me there.  This
thing is nothing new.
I hadn't even thought about the reflexive expression being
non-standard, though I know full well that it has come to be so.  It is
still current in my dialect.
Rambling back to the transitive/intransitive word pairs: the
distinction goes all the way back to Indo-European.  The root of the
intransitive verb has a formant added (usually *eye/*eyo) which changes
the semantics to causative, so that a new verb is derived from "sit"
meaning "cause to sit, set".  Similarly "lay" means "cause to lie".
They must be transitive because the subject is causing someone or
something (the object) to do the  action.  German "stellen" is a
causative, derived from "stehen", though with a different formant.  It is
transitive.  English "drench" is the causative of "drink".  There are many
causatives in the first weak class of verbs in Germanic languages, often
with the intransitive base verb surviving among the strong verbs.  But,
I'm getting carried away, and perhaps not being all that relevant.
So I'll just conclude by saying that this word formation process has not
been productive since Proto-Germanic, so the odd thing is that this fossil
of a distinction has survived so long, not that it's disappearing.
Allison Turner-Hansen

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