XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.language.latin
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.
--
Helmut Richter
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