This and That

[Koontz John E]

A small aside on Gemranic demonstratives.  I thought we didn't do them
linguistic justice as we mentioned them in passing.  I should warn you all
that I am not a Germanist, even if I now venture to play one on the
Internet.

I consulted two standard grammars of Old English, (1) Bright and (2) Moore
and Knott.  Interestingly, neither mentioned yon at all.  I then checked
Webster's Collegiate and Prokosch's Comparative Germanic Grammar with
rather more luck.  The cognate of yon in German is jener, also the remote
demonstrative.  I'm not sure how common it is.  From the omission of OE
geon(d) (ancestor of yon - the g was soft:  pronounced as y) in OE
grammars it appears that yon has been "obs./dial." for a very long time in
English, however, suggesting that it has always been somewhere between
unknown and infrequent.  It may be only chance that it isn't well known in
standard dialects.

Note that OE student dictonaries do list geond, in the
adverbial/prepositional senses of 'throughout, as far as, all over'. That
would interest Wes Jones, I think, who argues that demonstratives and
adpositions are also related in Siouan languages.  Or perhaps the
inspiration comes out of his background as a Germanist.  (Not to mention
various cognate sets.)

The here/there/where forms are from locative adverbs her/thaer/hwaer,
which I believe most originally have been case forms of (1) he/heo/hit
'he/she/it', (2) the demonstrative se/seo/that 'that (male)/that
(female)/that (neuter)', and (3) the interrogative stems hwa/hwaet
'who/what', respectively.  In regard to the second, OE retained the PIE
mixture of *s- and *t- (th- in Germanic) demonstratives that occurs in
Greek ho/he/ton (*s > h).  Modern English has lost the s-forms. These
forms had corresponding 'motion towards' and 'motion from' forms,
hider/thider/hwider and heonan/thanan/hwanan.  Note that forms like hinder
'to behind' and nither 'to beneath' also existed, though in these the d
and th are part of the stem.  The others have -der corresponding to the
-ter in Latin comparatives, etc., I think.  These would lead to hinder and
nether, of course.  Hwaether meant 'which of two'.  It looks like yonder
might be yond-er, rather than yon-der, though it's hard (for me) to say.

It seems that Webster's believes that yore is from gear 'year'.  There
was, however, an adverb geo 'formerly, of old'. which might be relevant.
It seems that gear had reference in OE to both 'year' and 'past'.  For
that matter, it might also mean 'summer', interesting in connection with
Siouan 'winter counts', which, incidentally, it occurs to me, is the
English usage for the various chronologies painted on hide used among
Dakotan groups.  Presumably Dakotan or Plains sign language, general
English-Native American pidgin usage underlies this.

JEK