LL-L "Etymology" 2008.10.20 (09) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 20 October 2008 - Volume 09
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please set the encoding mode to Unicode (UTF-8).
If viewing this in a web browser, please click on
the html toggle at the bottom of the archived page
and switch your browser's character encoding to Unicode.
===========================================


From: LUCAS ANNEAR <annear at wisc.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.10.20 (08) [E]

Heather,

Ah, I knew there had to be some sort of cognate in English, and I don't know
how I didn't think of that. (apparently 'fordwine' was cited as late as
1366, as used by Chaucer, and 'dwine' as late as 1889)  About 'ver-, fer-,
for-, fair-', I had a professor say that generally (more-so in older Gmc) it
means 'to the (bitter) end'.  I think that this has been semantically
watered down over time (if it really had that sort of meaning to begin
with).  To think of one from OE, 'forweorþan', 'to perish'.
At any rate, regarding the 'dwinan' part, having no good etymological
dictionaries at hand, I went to etymonline (OED didn't give any *forms) and
they gave the P.Gmc form of *dwinanan.  I'm not that good at sound changes
regarding High German, which is probably why I'm still thrown on why there
is 'verschwinden'.  Is there a particular condition under which *d(w) >
sch(w), s(v); as opposed to *d(w) > t(w).  Thanks a lot.
Ron, thanks for the Low Saxon cognates; you, the list, and your website have
been my best resources so far for everything LS (as well as all Lowlands
related things).
Essentially though, my original question has been answered, thank you all
very much.

Regards,
Luke Annear

----- Original Message -----
From: Lowlands-L List <lowlands.list at GMAIL.COM>
Date: Monday, October 20, 2008 9:04 pm
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.10.20 (08) [E]
To: LOWLANDS-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG

> From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.10.20 (06) [E/LS]
>
> from Heather Rendall  heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk
>
> Reinhard wrote: Low Saxon has *verswinnen*, *swinnen* and some
> dialects also
> *dwinnen*, older ones *verdwynen* for 'disappear'.
>
> I've just looked up English ' dwindle' which , it seemed to me,  must
> be
> connected
>
> from OE dwinan  to waste away = (m) LG , MDu  dwinen, ON dvina
>
> So does the 'ver-' in front mean ' utterly/totally' in order to make
> it from
> wasting away to disappearing?
>
> Heather

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Yeah, I thought that was an impressive bit of etymological intuition on the
part of Ze Hezza.

I believe we are once again dealing with the old frequentive -l, and we are
also dealing with an intrusive -d-. Theoretically:

*dw**īne**
> *dwīn (shwa elesion)
> dwīn-l (frequentive suffixing)
> dwīn-d-l (d-intrusion)
> dwin-l (vowel shortening)
> *dwindle*

Other cases of (Old-Danish-inspired?) intrusive d:

brindle < bren 'brown color'
spindle < spin

I'm happy to know LL-L has been useful to you, Luke. You're certainly very
welcome. Feel free to ask me and others for LS or other cognates anytime.

Oh, no! We got ourselves another member of the Luc ~ Luke clan!

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20081020/04b579cf/attachment.htm>