Re: Estimation of latin words in German


"Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ..
John Atkinson <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

"Teach Yourself Danish" says the following: "A number of
adjectives are not inflected in comparison, but express
the comparative and the superlative with the help of
_mere_ and _mest_. Here belong adjectives of more than
one syllable and ending in -sk, unstressed -e, -en and
-rt (also past participles); present participles; and
very long adjectives: praktisk--mere praktisk--mest
praktisk; moderne; sulten; snavset; henrivende;
unmenneskelig."

[...]

Did the Danes already use more/most like this when they settled in
England, around the tenth century?

I don't think that I've seen the periphrastic construction
in classical Old West Norse. The comparative of <efniligr>
'promising', for instance, is <efniligri> (presumably from
*<efniligari>).

But Danish and Swedish come from Old East Norse, not Old West Norse.

In Swedish, "mera" and "mest" are used with adjectives that end in -ad and -isk, and all present and past participles. But, unlike Danish, adjectives in unstressed -a (= Danish -e)and -en do use -ar/-ast.

Norwegian has mer/mest (meir/mest in Nynorsk) obligatory for participial forms, and elsewhere it is "optional" (both lykkeligere and mer lykkelig, "happier" occur), according to Askedal in "The Gemanic languages". Norwegian is of course strongly influenced by Danish.

In Icelandic, meira and mest seem to be used only with indeclinable adjectives, for example "hugli". Since these adjectives are apparently Danish borrowings, this may be an innovation there, no?

Like Peter says, we need a historian of Danish, or someone who's familiar with OEN.

John.


Mossé, Handbook of Middle English, says of the periphrastic
construction in English:

This innovation which arose in OE (used with
participial adjectives) was possibly re-enforced
by French influence. In any case from 1300 on
it proliferated. It appeared as well with native
adjectives as with those of French or Latin origin,
and regardless of the number of syllables.

However, Merja Kytö and Suzanne Romaine, 'Competing forms of
adjective comparison in modern English: What could be _more
quicker_ and _easier_ and _more effective_?', at
<http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/archive/papers/kytorom.html>,
say this in their summary of the history of adjective
comparison in English:

Historically speaking, the so-called periphrastic
constructions with _more_ and _most _ [...] are
innovations. In Old English the comparative and
superlative forms of adjectives were uniformly
marked by inflectional endings; compare modern
English _greater _ and _greatest_. The periphrastic
forms first appeared in the thirteenth century (see
Mitchell 1985: 84–5 for the few attested possible
examples in Old English), possibly under the
influence of Latin (and to a lesser extent French).

[...]

Brian

.

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