Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Pabappa]

Though English has a perfectly good native word, shink, meaning "cupbearer, waiter; to pour an alcoholic drink", it has fallen out of use. I've always heard that the traditional explanation for disappearances like this is that a word falls out of use when it sounds too similar to another word, becomes too ireggular in inflection, or is so short that it can be difficult to hear. But this word is none of these. There are many other examples that I can't think of at the moment .... but it seems that some words simply fall out of fashion for reasons that defy traditional explanation. Perhaps modern English speakers have come to prefer words with more than one morpheme, or perhaps we simply don't like the sound of those old Germanic monosyllables.

If the latter examplanation is correct, it might be expected that phonemena like this would be more common in languages like English where a superstratrum with a different "style" imposes itself on a language, and that languages like German would remain truer to their roots by sticking with native words. Indeed, Schenk still means cupbearer in German, though wiktionary indicates the more common word to use these days is a compound, Mundschenk. A compound it may be, but it is native.

I dont know enough about Romanian to know if something similar has happened there .... e.g. did they go through a phase of dumping out perfectly good native Latinate vocabulary and adopting Slavic loans "just because", and if so, did they develop Slavic-sounding native words like zboară, vrea, etc purely because, at the time, initial clusters like that were fashionable?

This is something I'm looking to work into my conlangs, if I ever get around to it .... two branches of the same society, speaking a language related to Pabappa, who each live in mostly isolated habitats, and therefore adopt few loans, and neither are there great differences in sound changes between the two branches, but yet the two groups end up speaking very different sounding languages within 2,000 years because of the rapid turnover of vocabulary which occurred on both sides of the divide but in very different ways.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Though English has a perfectly good native word, shink, meaning "cupbearer, waiter; to pour an alcoholic drink", it has fallen out of use. I've always heard that the traditional explanation for disappearances like this is that a word falls out of use when it sounds too similar to another word, becomes too ireggular in inflection, or is so short that it can be difficult to hear. But this word is none of these. There are many other examples that I can't think of at the moment .... but it seems that some words simply fall out of fashion for reasons that defy traditional explanation. Perhaps modern English speakers have come to prefer words with more than one morpheme, or perhaps we simply don't like the sound of those old Germanic monosyllables.

I think it might be a combination of some of these factors — going on sound symbolis, shink sounds like some sort of pejorative name you might call somebody who is excessively sycophantic, where cup-bearer has an unambiguous meaning, and also is more descriptive of a function that is now itself obsolete. Shink also does sound similar to words like shirk, shrink, and skink, and stink, and I might guess that sounding similar to stink especially would help push it out further.

[Richard W]

I dont know enough about Romanian to know if something similar has happened there .... e.g. did they go through a phase of dumping out perfectly good native Latinate vocabulary and adopting Slavic loans "just because", and if so, did they develop Slavic-sounding native words like zboară, vrea, etc purely because, at the time, initial clusters like that were fashionable?

A more convincing explanation is that they were a bunch of Albanian-speakers who switched to speaking Latin, but had only a limited vocabulary. It's even possible that they switched to Latin because they couldn't understand one another's Albanian - I remember being told that in the first World War, North Walian and South Walian Welsh-speakers communicated in English because they couldn't understand (or couldn't bear) the others' Welsh. (The witness's preferred language was Welsh.)

[Man in Space]

“Shink” is an affrication away from a racial slur. That might have something to do with it.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I should've thought it became obsolete long before there was widespread contact between English-speakers and anybody towards whom that unfortunate other word might have been applied, though it probably does explain the decline in use of the word meaning "small hole", the American use of snicker for a sort of laugh, and a few other words resembling slurs that were originally not perceived as connected with them.

[hwhatting]

Indeed, Schenk still means cupbearer in German, though wiktionary indicates the more common word to use these days is a compound, Mundschenk. A compound it may be, but it is native.

Before anyone goes around in Germany using Schenk, it's obsolete in the meaning "innkeep", and much, much rarer than Mundschenk in the meaning "cup bearer" (and who is even talking about cup bearers nowadays, outside of history or fauxdieval fantasy contexts)? Nowadays, you'll mostly finding this word as a family name.
That the word has survived at all in Germany probably has something to do with the fact that the cognate words (ein/aus)schenken "to pour (a drink)", Schänke "tavern", Ausschank "selling of drinks" are still common; conversely, one of the causes for the falling out of use of shink is probably that it has become an isolated word.

[Raphael]

I've got the impression that Ausschank is mostly used in legal documents these days.

[hwhatting]

I've got the impression that Ausschank is mostly used in legal documents these days.

Yes. The whole group of -schenken in the meaning of "to pour" (as opposed to schenken meaning "give as a gift", which is also in full colloquial use) is formal / bookish and / or historical in use, at least for me.

[Creyeditor]

At least einschenken, I use colloquially.

[hwhatting]

At least einschenken, I use colloquially.

That's why I said "for me" - I'd normally use eingießen, and einschenken would be something I'd expect to hear from a waiter or guest at a formal dinner or a fancy restaurant.

[zompist]

Though English has a perfectly good native word, shink, meaning "cupbearer, waiter; to pour an alcoholic drink", it has fallen out of use. I've always heard that the traditional explanation for disappearances like this is that a word falls out of use when it sounds too similar to another word, becomes too ireggular in inflection, or is so short that it can be difficult to hear. But this word is none of these.

A lot of times it has to do with social factors-- who's coming up with the cool words.

I don't have access to the OED any more, but it'd be interesting to know when shink went out of fashion. FWIW I checked online KJV and Shakespeare concordances and didn't find it.

But it strikes me that the people who have cupbearers, and even waiters in older times, are the elite, and in medieval times they were French, or at least preferred French terms for things. In fact, some Googling suggests that wine was poured by the "butler", which is in fact a French borrowing (< bouteillier 'bottle guy').

[Jonlang]

I thought there was a PIE thread but couldn't find it, so:

I've been doing some serious digging into PIE for conlanging reasons (mostly, I want to make my conlangs more realistic). I have a couple of questions about thematic vowels:

1. Why thematic? What does this refer to?
2. Did thematic vowels impart any meaning on the resulting word, or was it just an arbitrary extra syllable?

[bradrn]

I thought there was a PIE thread but couldn't find it, so:

https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=59

I've been doing some serious digging into PIE for conlanging reasons (mostly, I want to make my conlangs more realistic). I have a couple of questions about thematic vowels:

1. Why thematic? What does this refer to?
2. Did thematic vowels impart any meaning on the resulting word, or was it just an arbitrary extra syllable?

From what I understand, ‘thematic’ is just the usual name for an extra meaningless vowel/consonant/syllable which is lexically determined and used in a certain paradigm. It’s not only a PIE-ist term by any means.

[Ares Land]

A lot of times it has to do with social factors-- who's coming up with the cool words.

I don't have access to the OED any more, but it'd be interesting to know when shink went out of fashion. FWIW I checked online KJV and Shakespeare concordances and didn't find it.

It's not in the OED. The closest are skink:

Probably a borrowing from Dutch [...]Now Scottish and archaic.

and shench, shenk. The last attestation is:

c. 1440 Promptorium Parvulorum 445/1 Schenkyn drynke, propino.

[hwhatting]

1. Why thematic? What does this refer to?

In Greek grammatic terminology, thema is the word stem. So "thematic vowel" is originally just a fancy way of saying "stem vowel".

2. Did thematic vowels impart any meaning on the resulting word, or was it just an arbitrary extra syllable?

Originally, probably yes. There are lots of theories out there what that original meaning was. In nominal inflection, some of the functions that are still observable in the oldest attested languages is forming adjectives from nouns, agent nouns, and action npuns.

[Richard W]

And for the verbs, it's been opined that the verbs' thematic suffix -h₁e- was a doublet of the subjunctive suffix -h₁e- .

[hwhatting]

And for the verbs, it's been opined that the verbs' thematic suffix -h₁e- was a doublet of the subjunctive suffix -h₁e- .

Where does the -h1- come from? Normally the thematic ending is reconstructed as -e/o- (with -o- being used before labials).
And it's not just been "opined" that the thematic suffix of the thematic verb classes is the same as the subjunctive suffix, it's the generally accepted theory. The only disagreements are about the precise relationship between the two uses.

[Richard W]

Where does the -h1- come from? Normally the thematic ending is reconstructed as -e/o- (with -o- being used before labials).

I don't know. One suggestion is that it is the demonstrative *e.

The evidence quoted for it is Vedic metre, where thematic vowels apparently make the previous syllable heavy. I can't find any references for that statement, which I heard on Cybalist, and it may have been refuted.

[hwhatting]

Where does the -h1- come from? Normally the thematic ending is reconstructed as -e/o- (with -o- being used before labials).

I don't know. One suggestion is that it is the demonstrative *e.

The evidence quoted for it is Vedic metre, where thematic vowels apparently make the previous syllable heavy. I can't find any references for that statement, which I heard on Cybalist, and it may have been refuted.

I can only say that this is the first time I see the thematic vowel reconstructed with -h1-. This certainly is not the generally accepted reconstruction.

[WeepingElf]

Where does the -h1- come from? Normally the thematic ending is reconstructed as -e/o- (with -o- being used before labials).

I don't know. One suggestion is that it is the demonstrative *e.

The evidence quoted for it is Vedic metre, where thematic vowels apparently make the previous syllable heavy. I can't find any references for that statement, which I heard on Cybalist, and it may have been refuted.

I can only say that this is the first time I see the thematic vowel reconstructed with -h1-. This certainly is not the generally accepted reconstruction.

Indeed not. Cybalist was not a handbook; all sorts of non-standard ideas were posted there.