The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.0565  Friday, 25 March 2005

[1]     From:   Bob Rosen <
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        Date:   Thursday, 24 Mar 2005 12:52:54 EST
        Subj:   Re: SHK 16.0551  Words Ending in eth/th

[2]     From:   Robin Hamilton <
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        Date:   Thursday, 24 Mar 2005 18:18:56 -0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 16.0551 Words Ending in eth/th


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Bob Rosen <
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Date:           Thursday, 24 Mar 2005 12:52:54 EST
Subject: 16.0551  Words Ending in eth/th
Comment:        Re: SHK 16.0551  Words Ending in eth/th

I believe that the same letter with a diacritical mark is used in Hebrew
to distinguish eth or et from s.

The Tav in Yiddish is usually pronounced as S at the end of a word.
Elizabethan English has its coincidences with other languages, I guess.
I'm not a linguist, but the similarity is interesting.

Bob

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Robin Hamilton <
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Date:           Thursday, 24 Mar 2005 18:18:56 -0000
Subject: 16.0551 Words Ending in eth/th
Comment:        Re: SHK 16.0551 Words Ending in eth/th

Peter Groves <
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 >Surely the issue here is whether forms ending in <eth>function in the
 >metre in a syllabically distinct way to those in <s>

..

 >The answer is that they clearly do.  To take a very few of the thousands
 >of possible instances:
 >
 >That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
 >Where wasteful time debateth with decay

Well, it would partly turn on the status of the Final Unaccented <e>in
Elizabethan English.

Leaving aside whether this was ever (even in Chaucer) anything other
than a literary tick, Spenser was reconstructing Chaucerian English
around this very time, so you could have:

         presenteth / debateth

.. as metrically identically (at least in syllabic terms) to:

         present'es / debat'es

I'm not sure if I'd go to the stake for this, but surely there are
instances in Shakespeare where the schwa at the end of a verb was a
factor in the metrical counting of a line?

Robin Hamilton

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