I've heard "heighth" too, and I agree that it's analogical. I suspect the morpheme boundary is involved somehow because English doesn't otherwise allow syllable codas in obstruent + th. All cases of those final clusters have a morpheme boundary. We do have words like "plinth" and "lymph," but they are (a) technical borrowings and (b) have for many speakers a homorganic epenthetic stop between the nasal and the fricative. But that's a matter of articulatory timing rather than of phonemic contrast.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: February 27, 2009 10:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question
It's interesting that we hear some commentators talking about the "heighth" of the basketball players. This is probably part of a widespread reanalysis by force of analogy. I guess the idea I've seen of it being related to a morpheme boundary has to be bogus.
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 8:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question
You're right, they do occur, although not commonly, but there is a history of /t~T/ alternations after a fricative that goes back quite a ways. Consider wide/width, long/length, young/youth vs. heave/heft, high/height, weigh/weight.
The OED entry for "sixth" shows a -t ending up into the latter half of the 17th c. with the modern form appearing, probably by analogy to other ordinals, in the early 16th. After the late 17th all citations show the -th form. Note that we still have the -t form in "first," although that implies a reanalysis of "first" that the etymology doesn't support. OED gives a Proto-Germanic reconstruction as *fersti-z with the ablaut variant *forsti-z. -z is the Proto-Germanic nom. sg. masc. suffix, and the /t/ is part of the stem, not a suffix.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: February 27, 2009 9:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question
By the way, there is a final cluster ending in /sT/ in English -- the word sixth, when pronounced carefully. I think the morpheme boundary has something to do with its persistence.
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 8:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question
We can add to wast/wert the form "art," where the r < s very early by the same rhotacism that gives us was/were, except that Verner's Law seems not to have been involved as it was in the latter. Historically "art" and "is" have the same root, cognate to es- in Latin and a lot of other Indo-European (es (2s), est (3s), estis (2p)).
On wast/wert, I'll quote directly from the OED (the material in {} is OED special font that doesn't have an ASCII equivalent and gets replaced by code for the character):
"b. 2nd sing. wast (w{rfa}st, w{schwa}st), orig. were. [in Goth. wast, ON. vast, vart, OHG., OS. wâri, OFris. wêre.] Forms: 1 w{aeacu}re, 2-6 were, (3 wore), 6-7 werst, wart, 6- wert, wast. North. 3- was. negative 1-3 nære, nere. The modern analogical wast has displaced the etymological were (with grammatical ablaut) chiefly under the influence of Tindale and the Bible; the intermediate wert (Shakespeare's form) prevailed in literature during the 17th and 18th c., and has been used by many 19th century writers."
The number before a form or list of forms indicates the century or centuries during which it was used, where 1 = 1100s, 2=1200s, etc.
So "wast" is a 16th c. form that developed by analogy, perhaps, of the form
was : wast :: has : hast
Grammatical ablaut refers to the change in vowel from "e" in "were" to "a" in "wast." Ablaut is a technical term for these sorts of vowel changes, common in English strong verbs like see/saw/seen, drive/drove/driven, etc. The alveolar stop /t/ rather than the fricative /T/, spelled <th>, occurs because of the preceding /s/. English doesn't allow final consonant clusters of two voiceless fricatives like /sT/.
"Wert" strikes me also as analogical, attaching the phonologically derived /t/ inflectional suffix from "wast" to "were."
The entire OED entry for "be" makes for very interesting reading. The amount of variation in forms throughout the history of the language and even across modern dialects is truly astonishing.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
Sent: 2009-02-26 15:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question
Maybe someone could explain the difference between wast and wert, both archaic 2nd person singular endings where the subject is thou.
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 1:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question
Lorraine,
-est is a second person singular ending, used with the second singular pronoun "thou." -eth is a third singular ending. Neither is used in the plural, and both of them survived into Early Modern English and then died out largely by the 18th c., although they continued in some dialects.
In modern parodies of older Englishes, -eth tends to get used as a pseudo-archaism regardless of the person or number of the subject. The language never used it in that way.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lorraine Wallace
Sent: 2009-02-26 14:48
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Question
One of my students was wondering about the eth and est endings of verbs in archaic literature. When is eth appropriate and when is est? I have never thought of this question. We came up with a possibility, but I wondered how the experts would explain this.
Thanks for your input.
Lorraine
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