Linguistic Creationism humour

[vyvyanx]

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002133.html

Comments

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

First evolution, now linguistics? What next?

I really don't know if I should laugh or cry.

[kaet.livejournal.com]

The lay/lie article linked to from that one was very interesting. I think that it's mad that a transitive causative version of an intransitive stative verb should be so almost similar, but different. Do they come from different places, and have converged (largely accidentally? (in that the convergence happened as a result of processes which are, for each, independent of the convergence)). It all seems very strange. I guess speech and speak are a bit like that, aren't they?

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Lay and lie (in the meaning "lie down" rather than "tell lies", which is from another source entirely) are from the same Indo-European root *legh- originally meaning a single action: "to lay oneself down", later becoming durative "to lie" in Indo-European descendent languages. The normal result of this PIE form in Germanic would be *le3- with a weak present tense stem affix -j- following the root; this meant "lie". It had a strong past tense and past participle; by the Old English period, following regular sound change, the main forms were: ic licge "I lie", thu ligest/li:st "you (sg.) lie", hit ligeth/li:th "it lies", past laeg, past participle legen. The lidge present tense form only survived for a short while after OE; the li: form prevailed across the present tense, underwent normal diphthongisation in the Great Vowel Shift, and resulted in modern present tense lie and lies. The past tense and past participle descended regularly from OE to give lay and laid.

However, in Proto-Germanic, a second verb was derived from *le3 - a causative, with ablauted vowel: *la3- which meant "to cause X to lie; to lay". This derived verb had entirely weak forms in present, past and participle: by Old English it looked like: ic lecge "I lay", thu legest/legth "you (sg.) lay", hit legeth/legth "it lays", past legde, past participle legd. Again, ledge (as a verb!) did not survive into the present day, being replaced by the layest and layeth-type forms. The past and participle forms descended normally, giving laid.

So, this confusing similarity of meanings and forms is quite old, and would have been about as awkward for Anglo-Saxons, and other Germanic speakers. A very similar pair of words are sit and set - here again, the set form is a Germanic causative derivative of the original intransitive verb (PIE *sed-).

Speak and speech are closely related to each other: in Old English, the verb was sprecan, with past tense (in the plural) sprae:con; this form seems to be the source of sprae:c "speech". (The loss of /r/ in both words is mysterious...)

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Goodness... I think that theory should have its own fanfic.