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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press
ABSTRACT
This article is concerned with the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of dearr and pearf, which in Old English were clearly distinct preterite-present verbs. Nothing yet foreshadowed their future merger and the Middle English replacement of thar(f) with need. Their most significant syntactic restriction was that unlike other Old English premodal verbs they tended to occur only in nonassertive (negative, interrogative and conditional) contexts. Another interesting phenomenon was the occasional occurrence of third person singular forms ending in -ep in northern glosses to gospels.
1. Introduction
Dearr and pearf, whose semantic and syntactic properties distinguished them from other preterite-present verbs, were ancestors of modern dare and need, which also behave differently than typical modals. For this reason some grammarians call them 'marginal' modals (e.g. Quirk et al. 1972: 82, Denison 1993: 295). In late Middle English thar(f) was replaced by need, as its forms started to merge with those of dare. The degree of morphological, syntactic and semantic overlap between purven and durren was so high in Middle English that one of the verbs had to go (cf. Molencki, forthcoming). Similar processes occurred in the cognate Germanic languages. Nevertheless, in Old English they still appeared to be two clearly distinct verbs, though they shared certain morphosyntactic and semantic properties. The language material for this study comes from the Diachronic Part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (Kyto 1993), B&T, OED and also from the Early English Text Society editions of Old English texts.
2. Indo-European and Germanic origins
Both dearr and pearf (1) belonged to the third class of preterite-present verbs, which means that they followed the third ablaut series. The Indo-European proto-form of dearr was reconstructed as *dhers-, *dhors-, *dhrs- on the basis of such cognate forms as, for example, Sanskrit dhrsh-, perf. dadharsha, Greek [theta][alpha][rho][sigma][epsilon][alpha][nu], Old Church Slavonic drbzate (cf. B&T, QED, Prokosch 1939, Reszkiewicz 1973: 156). The Proto-Germanic apophony in this case must have been *ders- *dars-, *durs-, *durs- and due to subsequent phonological changes the following cognate forms developed in Germanic languages:
Gothic ga-daursan dars daursum/daursun daursta OHG turran tar turrun torsta OSax durran dar durrun dorsta OFr thura, dura thur, dur, dor thuron thorste, dorste OE * durran dear(r) durron dorste
The perfective prefix ga-, ge-, gi- was often attached to the verb, especially in the past tense forms. In Old Norse the verb appears to have been lost and replaced by the weak verb pora (cf. Tellier 1962: 56, Nielsen 1981: 186). The two biblical quotations below show that early Germanic languages were consistent in rendering the Latin semideponens audere:
1) Et nemo iam audebat eum interrogare.
Vulgate Mark 12.34
jah ainshun panaseips ni gadaursta ma fraihnan.
Wulfila Gothic
7 hine ne dorste nan mann ahsian.
West Saxon Gospels
7 neaenig mon soo ?? gee gedarste hine gefraigne.
Lindisfarne Gospels (Old Northumbrian)
7 naenig mon soooa gidarste hine gifregna.
Rushworth Gospels (Old Mercian)
2) et nemo audebat discentium interrogare eum...
Vulgate John 21.12
And nan paera be bar saet ne dorste hine axian hwaet he waere.
WSG
7 negi darste aenigmonn oara hlingindi ?? oara raestendra gifraegna ?? frasiga hine...
Lindisfarne Gospels
7 naenigmonn ne darste of oegnum gifregna hine...
Rushworth Gospels
Inti nioman ni gidorsta thero sizzentero fragen man...
Tatian 237.4 (Old High German)
It appears that the Second (High German) Consonantal Shift d > t has not yet affected the forms of durran in the language of Tatian (c.830). The verb is also attested in the coeval Old Saxon poem Heliand (e.g. ni gidorstun nahor gangan, 1055; cf. Tellier 1962: 55).
As for the etymology of ??earf, the pre-Teutonic ablaut *terp-, *torp.. *trp.- is not certainly identified (cf. OED s.v. thar). Some etymological dictionaries (e.g. Bruckner 1927: 579, Linde 1859: 724, Machek 1971: 477) list several probable cognates in other Indo-European languages, whose consonantism and semantics provide some evidence for the relationship, e.g. Sanskrit tarpati 'satisfies', Avestan thrafdha 'satisfied', Greek [tau][epsilon][rho][pi][omega] 'I am satisfied', Latin oportet < *ob-portet 'one should, need' (with the metathesis of p and t), Lithuanian tarpti 'to be well off' and especially Prussian enterpo 'I need' and Old Church Slavonic trebovati 'to need' (hence Slovenian treba, Czech treba, Polish trzeba, potrzebowac). Rejzek (2001: 679) and Snoj (1997: 880) believe that the Indo-European root *terp- 'to satisfy need' had the variant *terb(h)- 'to need', whose descendant forms developed in Slavonic and Germanic. The Proto-Germanic gradation forms are reconstructed as *??per[beta]- *??ar[bet a]-, *??ar[beta]-, *??ar[beta]-, on the basis of the following cognates:
Gothic *paurban parf paurbum paurfta OHG durfan darf durfun dorfta OSax thurban tharf thurbun thorfta MDu dorven dorv dorven dorfte OFr *thurva thurf/thorf thurvon thorste OE *purfan pearf purfon purfte ON purfa parf purfom purfta
Here are some early attested Germanic examples, which show that apart from the preterite-present ??earf and the prefixed bepearf, we also find synonymous verbs (behofian) and periphrastic expressions discussed in Section 7:
3) scit enim pater vester quia his omnibus indigetis... Vulgate Matt 6.32
waituh ??an atta izwar sa ufar himinam ??atei ??aurbu??... Wulfila's Gothic
Witodlice eower faeder wat ??aet ge eallra ??yssa ??inga be-??urfon... WSG
wat foroon fader iuer foroon of oaem allum ge behofes ?? iuh behofes...
Lindisfarne Gospels
for??on ??e eower faeder wat ??aet ge ??issa alra ourfun...
Rushworth Gospels
Uueiz iuuer fater thaz ir thes alles bithurfut... Tatian 38.32
(4) nunc scimus quia scis omnia et non opus est tibi ut quis te interroget...
Vulgate John 16.30...
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