Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/magraz
Latest comment: 8 years ago by CodeCat in topic Origin of English cognate
Origin of English cognate[edit]
How was it determined that the English related word meager came from the French word, and was not a direct descendant of the protoword, possibly influenced by the French in spelling, as one 19th century book says? Is it because of the retention of the g sound? 207.118.238.254 22:56, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, pretty much. The Old English word, if it had survived, would have become "mair". Compare the nearly-identical fair < fæġer < *fagraz. —CodeCat 23:08, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- The native Old English word probably assisted its French cognate, but the English word would likely have ended up as mair. Funny thing is, the form parallels Old English fæger, which, though it ends up as modern fair, also produced a Middle English form with a g (fager). There may have been a gap in the chronology of mæger, or the word may have been decreasing in Old English...I'm not sure Leasnam (talk) 23:12, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- Is it possibly dialectal? A northern form maybe? ic survives into Middle English with the plosive intact, doesn't it? This might be related. —CodeCat 23:19, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- Possibly. The usual outcome of intervocalic g in ME is i/y or w (sometimes gh), but attestations of forms like fagen (“fain”), folgen (“follow”), magen (“(we) may”) in ME make one wonder how conservative some dialects of OE might have been. Leasnam (talk) 23:38, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- Well, at least for the verbs, the appearance of -g- is simply a retention from Old English. The infinitive never had palatalization of the medial consonant. —CodeCat 23:40, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- Possibly. The usual outcome of intervocalic g in ME is i/y or w (sometimes gh), but attestations of forms like fagen (“fain”), folgen (“follow”), magen (“(we) may”) in ME make one wonder how conservative some dialects of OE might have been. Leasnam (talk) 23:38, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- Is it possibly dialectal? A northern form maybe? ic survives into Middle English with the plosive intact, doesn't it? This might be related. —CodeCat 23:19, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
- The native Old English word probably assisted its French cognate, but the English word would likely have ended up as mair. Funny thing is, the form parallels Old English fæger, which, though it ends up as modern fair, also produced a Middle English form with a g (fager). There may have been a gap in the chronology of mæger, or the word may have been decreasing in Old English...I'm not sure Leasnam (talk) 23:12, 17 October 2015 (UTC)