Thanks for the heads-up – I need to read both of these books as soon as possible! Early on in my academic career I was the kind of nerd of worked on reconstructing lost early dialects of Anglo-Saxon and I’m still fascinated by language, just in a less technical way.
With reference to 1), I can’t believe I did not know that the -ing forms are derived from Celtic languages. This is confusing because I thought I heard somewhere that the present usage in English started in the 16th or 17th century, explaining why related languages like French and Spanish do not use these constructions in the same way. I would expect anything with a Celtic root would go a lot further back than that.
Thanks for the heads-up – I need to read both of these books as soon as possible! Early on in my academic career I was the kind of nerd of worked on reconstructing lost early dialects of Anglo-Saxon and I’m still fascinated by language, just in a less technical way.
With reference to 1), I can’t believe I did not know that the -ing forms are derived from Celtic languages. This is confusing because I thought I heard somewhere that the present usage in English started in the 16th or 17th century, explaining why related languages like French and Spanish do not use these constructions in the same way. I would expect anything with a Celtic root would go a lot further back than that.