Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:05:01.785Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Middle English Run

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Fritz Mezger
Fritz Mezger*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The explanation of Middle English run presents many difficulties. These could easily be solved if one succeeded in proving, or at least in making probable, the existence of an Old English runnan.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , December 1933 , pp. 1036 - 1040
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 About 1325 Metr. Hom. runnande (NED).

2 Sievers, Angels. Gramm. 3, par. 386, anm. 2, 3.

3 Part. Pres: 1330 Arth. and Merl. arnand, 13 … K. Alis. (Laud MS.) arnyng (NED).

4 The form renna is a later development; the e is taken over from the causative; rhymes in Scaldic poems testify a rinna as well as a brinna.

5 Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik (Heidelberg, 1925), par. 36.

6 It may be observed again and again that certain sound changes recur at different periods in the same language group.

7 Jordan, op. cit., par. 34, 2.

8 Noreen claims that the e in brenna, renna as well as the i in brinna and rinna can be explained as an old change n:nn within the inflectional system. See his Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen 3 (1913), par. 235.—This is not quite convincing, since a Germanic verb could probably, according to its structure, be derived only from the plural form ṇvánti and not from the singular, which has an element -eu- (in ṇóti). The influence of the causatives brenna and renna is to be seen here already.

9 Walde-Pokorny, i, 796.

10 The same root with the vowel i in: Middle Low German triseln, Westphal. triseln “rollen, taumeln,” Dutch trillen “zittern.” Walde-Pokorny, i, 796.

11 Noreen 272, Anm. 2(rn>nn); however, spenna and sperna probably unrelated.

12 As speornan is rather late, it may be a late formation, perhaps by analogy to eornan.

13 One might think of a reduction dre- from a dissyllabic base dere- (compare Homer att. ; see Specht, K. Z. 59, 117). That dere- is originally disyllabic is made probable by drū- in OIcel. trúÐr, “Gaukler,” OE. trúÐ, “Possenreisser” = OIrish drūth, “Narr.”

14 Various attempts at explanation are given in Walde-Pokorny, i, 589.

15 rinnan might also be (in part), but not very probably, a development of OInd. ríṇvati, (by the side of ).

16 Concerning the forms cf. Walde-Pokorny, ii, 168; i, 138.