Re: Official German spelling update

Antonio Marques <no_email@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:

So I rather thought it was a fossil form, possibly misanalyzed to the
mondegreen point, maybe even missing a syllable at the end, or /dank/ not
even being originally the noun form.

  In 2009, Melanie Löber wondered, "Could 'viel' have been
  inflected more in the past, so that "vielen Dank" represents
  a fossilized form from earlier times?".

|Now one could assume that "viel" was possibly inflected more
|in the past and gradually lost its inflectional forms.
|According to our sources, however, the opposite is the case:
|both Hermann Paul's "Mittelhochdeutschen Grammatik" and the
|"Deutschen Wörterbuch" of the Grimm Brothers assume that
|"viel" (or the Middle High German vil) was originally used as
|a noun that entailed a partitive genitive. As you can see
|from the following examples, this usage persisted well beyond
|Middle High German.
|
|Examples
|
|so ein mensch hat hie erlitten vil unglücks
|(H. Sachs, 16th century)
|
|viel glücks! ich will euch denn nur hier verlassen
|(G. E. Lessing, late 18th century)
|
|viel danks für dein andenken
|(C. M. Wieland, late 18th century)
|
|Subsequently, the noun could have developed into an article
|word that corresponds to today's uninflected "viel".
|In addition, a few forms of "viel" that were inflected like
|adjectives are already attested in Middle High German texts.
|
|However, why the inflected forms are used in certain
|constructions and the uninflected forms in others does not lie
|in German grammar itself, but in language use, i.e., all
|speakers and writers of German decide together which usage
|prevails. And in the case of "vielen Dank", they have evidently
|decided in favor of the inflected form of "viel" in deviation
|from the general rule.
|
Melanie Löber in 2009.