LL-L "Semantics" 2008.06.26 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 26 June 2008 - Volume 02
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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Semantics" 2008.06.25 (03) [E]

My intuition says that the usage of small and little in English is
originally from Scandinavian, i.e. Old Norse, Old Danish, Old Norwegian.

In the Scandinavian North Germanic languages the usage of litt etc. and
små is like in English.
In the other West Germanic languages (other than English) "smal"
and "schmal" have a different meaning, in Dutch and German "klein" in the
word for both little and small.

It looks like the difference between much and many.
In the Scandinavian languages we see myck etc. and menge etc., whereas
German has only 'viel' and Dutch 'veel'.

So here too, Scandinavian may have at least encouraged the English usage.

Ingmar

From: Ben J. Bloomgren <ben.j.bloomgren at gmail.com>
Subject: [LLL] Morphology? Lexicology? Semantics?

 Hei alle sammen (to borrow from another list I'm on [Sorry Reinhard])

Being that I am a linguistics-minded person, I've always wondered about the
semantic considerations and origins of the following scenarios:

Two people are walking down a street. One sees that a house finch has been
injured. This person says:

"Poor little bird(ie)!"

The other says:

"that's quite a blow for such a small bird."

Being that, at least in Norwegian, I've seen evidence of both adjectives
being present in Germanic languages, what's the origin of the terms small
and little? Where did we get the semantic differences between the so-called
poor, defenseless little ones and the simple size of the small ones?
Ben
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