Des origines indo-européennes de shall
This paper presents the hypothesis that *(s)kel- ’to owe, be under an obligation’ continued in Old English by sculan and in Modern English by shall, is derived by a process of grammaticalisation and subsequent lexicalisation from homonymic PIE *(s)kel-’to cut’, via a putative specialized meaning of...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires du Midi
2008-12-01
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| Series: | Anglophonia |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/acs/12316 |
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| Summary: | This paper presents the hypothesis that *(s)kel- ’to owe, be under an obligation’ continued in Old English by sculan and in Modern English by shall, is derived by a process of grammaticalisation and subsequent lexicalisation from homonymic PIE *(s)kel-’to cut’, via a putative specialized meaning of the latter, namely ’to cut notches on a tally stick to symbolize a duty, a debt, an obligation’. On a linguistic level, this hypothesis is based on the assumption that the IndoEuropean perfect denotes a state resulting from the completion of an earlier event. On a non linguistic level, it is accredited by the fact that the oldest Germanic civilizations symbolized relations of obligation by cutting notches on a tally stick. |
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| ISSN: | 1278-3331 2427-0466 |