LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.19 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 19 July 2009 - Volume 04
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From: R. F. Hahn
<sassisch at yahoo.com<http://uk.mc264.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sassisch@yahoo.com>
>
Subject: Morphology

Dear Lowlanders,

Over the years we've been talking a lot about the impoverishment of
morphological marking in English during its middle period of development. I
suppose the rough consensus is that this happened as a result of English
reassertion after the end of Norman rule. At that time, remaining speakers
of Anglo-Norman (including many ethnic English people whose families had
abandoned English for Norman) had to use English, the language had become
infiltrated by Norman, and was taking on creolization traits. I am also
wondering if the influence of speakers of Celtic languages ought to be
considered, for formerly pretty much solidly Celtic-speaking areas had begun
using English at least as a lingua franca.

At any rate, while most English prefixes and suffixes were disappearing
during that period, one of them did not and came to be regularized. I am
talking about adverbial "-ly" ([adjective]+ly), as in soft -> softly, quick
-> quickly. As you know, this is a pretty consistently applied rule, among
the few exceptions being fast -> fast (He is fast - He runs fast [not
*fastly]). I understand that "-ly" came from Old English *lích *~ *líc ~ lík
* from which "like" came. In fact, in some Modern English dialects and also
in Scots you can still use adverbial constructions like "greedy-like" for
"greedily".

It is not that English had no adverbial marking before this. Old English
uses mostly the *-e* marking, e.g. *déop *'deep' -> *déope *'deeply', which
can still be found in the most conservative Low Saxon dialects that retained
final *-e* (deyp -> deype). Sometime during the Middle English stage final *
-e* was dropped in pronunciation and with it adverbial *-e*. Already in Old
English, some adjectives required *-líce* for adverbialization, namely  *
-líc* + adverbial *-e*; e.g. beald 'bold' -> *bealdlíce* 'boldly'. Adverbial
marking had already been there. It is only that *-líce* eventually came to
be applied consistently, thus making up for the lost *-e*.

The question, however, remains as to why this innovation was deemed
necessary. Why was adverbial marking so important that it had to be
preserved and its loss conpensated for? I am wondering if it was because of
the consistent use of Norman adverbial *-ment *(e.g. *notoirement *'well
known', *grevousement *'grievously', *humblement *'humbly',
*pleinement *'plainly').
Prior to that there was Scandinavian influence, and Scandinavian, too, has
mandatory adverbial marking (e.g. [adjective]+*t*). Among the Continental
Germanic languages, on the other hand, adverbial marking is somewhere
between weak and absent.

Information, thoughts, hunches, anyone?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

P.S.: An excellent on-line resource for Anglo-Norman:
http://www.anglo-norman.net/

•

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