Search -
Epochs of language in general and of the Eng. tongue especially
Epochs of language in general and of the Eng tongue especially Author:James Clark Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. TRACES OF THE ANGLO-SAXON GRAMMAR IN MODERN ENGLISH. Although, as has just been remarked, all grammar proper has disappeared from the English,... more » — although in other words, it has, as a language passed from the Inflexional into the Analytic stage of linguistic development; yet is it an interesting fact, that our present English retains some traces of its former grammatical structure. 1. In forms like ough-t, that, i-t (cf. A. S. hi-t; Du. hi-t; Icel. hi-tt; 0. Frisian hi-t; M. Gothic i'-to), athwar-t, wha-t, etc., — we have an ancient neuter postfix, said by many grammarians to be of Norse origin, but which is, in reality, found not only in both the Norse and the Teutonic languages of the Gothic, but also in many other languages both Aryan and Extra-Aryan. This postfix in -I Anglo-Saxon preserved exclusively in the declension of its pronouns as he, ked, hi-t, — he, she, it; se, seo, pae-t; and hwa = who and neuter hwae-t = wha-t. In the Scandinavian idioms alone, however, is this neuter postfor- mative currently employed as such. Thus JOan. en god mand = a good man where mand is masculine; but e-t god-t barn =. a good child, where barn is neuter. Both the article and the adjective take the postfix in question. It is also more than possible that some of our substautival and adverbial forms in -/, especially when derived from verbs and adjectives, are also primitive neuters. Thus Dan. rod-t =. redness is from the adjective rod = red: Dan. Berliner-blaa-t = Prussian blue from the adjective blaa = blue by the addition of the neuter sufformative. Compare also such words as see-d, A. S. sae-d, Germ. saa-t, Du. zaa-d and cfiil-d, A. S. cit-d, Germ, kin-d, Du. kin-d. 2. In forms like on-ce, twi-ce, ihri-ce, hen-ce, ichen-ce, or according to the 0. E. orthography o...« less