In "The Merchant of Venice," Launcelot Gobbo declares:
"Murder cannot be hid long;
a man's son may;
but at the length, truth will out."
Out -- was probably a verb.
In other words, Elizebethans didn't think of [He will away]
as an abbreviation of [He will go away]
On Mon, 16 Dec 2024, HenHanna wrote:
In "The Merchant of Venice," Launcelot Gobbo declares:
"Murder cannot be hid long;
a man's son may;
but at the length, truth will out."
Out -- was probably a verb.
Here I disagree.
In other words, Elizebethans didn't think of [He will away]
as an abbreviation of [He will go away]
That depends whether "will" is
1) a normal verb with approximately the same meaning as "want":
he will go away = he wants/intends/desires to go away
2) only an indicator of future tense:
he will go away = in the future, he goes away
In modern English, case (2) is usually understood, but that can be
different in Elizabethan English. A question "What wilt thou?" has no
verb
as in case (2), so it must be case (1) with the meaning "What do you
intend?" Case (1) occurs also in modern English as "if you will" without
a
verb.
Case (1) was my spontaneous interpretation of "he will away", certainly influenced by German usage where one would say "er will weg" with the
meaning "he desires to get away". By the way, all modal verbs in German
have two different past participles depending of whether they have a
verb:
Without verb: "er hat gewollt"; with verb: "er hat kommen wollen". That
is, the double character of the same verb as modal verb or ordinary verb
is more perspicuous than in English. It is conceivable that Elizabethan English resembled German more than today's.
In "The Merchant of Venice," Launcelot Gobbo declares:
"Murder cannot be hid long;
a man's son may;
but at the length, truth will out."
Out -- was probably a verb.
Here I disagree.
On 2024-12-16, Helmut Richter <hr.usenet@email.de> wrote:
Me too.In "The Merchant of Venice," Launcelot Gobbo declares:Here I disagree.
"Murder cannot be hid long;
a man's son may;
but at the length, truth will out."
Out -- was probably a verb.
The construction of modal verb + direction, but with the movement verb elided, is common in German:
Ich muss zum Fris||r [].
I have to [go] to the barber shop.
Ich kann heute nicht nach Frankfurt [].
I can't [travel] to Frankfurt today.
[...]--
Op 18/12/2024 om 20:51 schreef Christian Weisgerber:
The construction of modal verb + direction, but with the movement verb
elided, is common in German:
Ich muss zum Fris||r [].
I have to [go] to the barber shop.
Ich kann heute nicht nach Frankfurt [].
I can't [travel] to Frankfurt today.
In Dutch too.
What seems a bit odd though when "rephrased" in Dutch, is expressions like
Ich bin (dann) nach Hause.
when describing the past:
(So) I went home.
That would be "Ich war" for us :)
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