My students still reckon Lande’s 2 motivations for ‘unless’ = ‘if not’ (below) too abstract, formalistic! Thus I need a 3rd simpler, motivation with merely etymology. But I never studied linguistics! How do I
1. use these etymology quotations, to motivate ‘unless’ = ‘if not’?
2. teach why “less than” means 'if not'?
We turn now to unless. The construction developed toward the end of the Middle English period, in the early fifteenth century. At this stage it is a comparative, lesse than, or in/on/of lesse than.
By late ME the construction must have become opaque, because we begin to find the forms unless/onless without than. This is presumably in part a folk etymology relating the connective to a negative derivative un- (it can be assumed that the negative inference from the protasis has been lexicalized into, that is, has taken on a morphological form of, the prefix of the conjunction).
Idem, page 156.
As we have seen, unless derives from less than, and un- has no historical origin in a negative.
StackExchange wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2024 9:46 pmMy students still reckon Lande’s 2 motivations for ‘unless’ = ‘if not’ (below) too abstract, formalistic! Thus I need a 3rd simpler, motivation with merely etymology. But I never studied linguistics! How do I
1. use these etymology quotations, to motivate ‘unless’ = ‘if not’?
2. teach why “less than” means 'if not'?
We turn now to unless. The construction developed toward the end of the Middle English period, in the early fifteenth century. At this stage it is a comparative, lesse than, or in/on/of lesse than.
By late ME the construction must have become opaque, because we begin to find the forms unless/onless without than. This is presumably in part a folk etymology relating the connective to a negative derivative un- (it can be assumed that the negative inference from the protasis has been lexicalized into, that is, has taken on a morphological form of, the prefix of the conjunction).
Idem, page 156.
As we have seen, unless derives from less than, and un- has no historical origin in a negative.