Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Snidely <snidely.too@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Somewheres
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2024 19:06:33 -0700
Organization: Dis One
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <mn.247a7e89dc4d832c.127094@snitoo>
References: <vatljd$mjf9$1@dont-email.me> <pan$446ac$ba5dac04$67ebf9e0$47ac5644@gmail.com> <vb0a62$170hl$1@dont-email.me> <pan$6cdcd$a1e57e8a$8ebe27ea$32af951f@gmail.com> <f5140de8d161885842798961deb38a46@www.novabbs.com> <m31q2260rz.fsf@leonis4.robolove.meer.net> <vb4ejj$2rvka$1@dont-email.me> <slrnvdc5jt.ddb.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de> <slrnvdha4j.6rm.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de>
Reply-To: snidely.too@gmail.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15"; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2024 04:06:37 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="293b0bd74e53775c43b6633e7b80078d";
	logging-data="194486"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18lw2GEolZ1hQfURsVvm5hbQQMeHKihN3s="
Cancel-Lock: sha1:73wBO3mKb7OKP+Tryr+lN7CZ2zk=
X-ICQ: 543516788
X-Newsreader: MesNews/1.08.06.00-gb
Bytes: 3212

Christian Weisgerber suggested that ...
> On 2024-09-02, Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>
>> Have you ever wondered why the third person plural present tense
>> forms of Italian verbs are so strangely stressed, e.g., pārlano
>> instead of *parlāno?  And where is that -o from anyway?
>
> So that was an example where something was added at the end of
> words.  I don't intend this as an invalidation of the general
> observation that there is a longtime trend of phonetic erosion, but
> I want to show that actual language history is complex and circuitous.
>
> Here's another one.  From the King James Version, you may be familiar
> with the second person singular indicative ending -(e)st (-t in
> some verbs), "thou thinkest" etc.  German also has -st across the
> second person singular.  Clearly, -st is an old 2SG marker...
>
> ... Except, Slavic has -¨ there.  Latin, not a language to drop final
> -t, has -s.  Even Gothic has -s, and if you look at the variants
> in early Old English and Old High German, the original 2SG ending
> is also -s.
>
> Where did the -t come from?  There are two hypotheses.  One, dismissed
> by Ringe (and I'm skeptical as well), is from missegmentation when
> the subject pronoun (tu ~ ūu) followed the verb.  The other involves
> the appearance of -s-t due to sound changes in some preterite-present
> verbs, reanalysis as -st, and spread to other verbs.  Remarkably,
> this appears to have happened independently in both English and
> German.

I relate all this discussion to what Charlton Laird (sr, IIRC) 
considered two fundamental principles of language change:

1)  People are lazy, leading to simplification.
2)  People are inventive, leading to new words and new constructions.


/dps

-- 
Rule #0: Don't be on fire.
 In case of fire, exit the building before tweeting about it.
(Sighting reported by Adam F)