(04-01-2020, 01:34 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anton, I read your post and what I don't quite understand is how the -en form of the verb fits into your particular proposal? "Probieren" is infinitive, could be imperative (although I cannot say off the top of my head whether this form of imperative existed already in the 15th century. As an aside: in modern linguistics the infinitive form of the imperative is described as the most direct/impolite one since the addressed person is negated existence and reduced to the action to be taken). In your interpretation you need it to be something like a past participle? Something like probiert?
No I definitely do not regard it as imperative here. As I write in the post, the exact grammar seeks attention of a MHD linguist. With my level of German and the volume of medieval German texts that I have read (or, rather, that I haven't), I can only throw the idea in and see what professionals say of it. But as far as I understand, in modern German perfect that would be "probiert" if active (participle or not), and "probierend" if passive (present participle). The former variant would mean "Having tried <the medicine>, ...", the latter - "<The medicine> having been tried, ..." Please correct me if I'm wrong.
What's I'm not at all sure in (as I write in the post), is that "palden" can be read not only as "soon", but as "as soon as" (= modern "sobald"). It's an interesting option though (not mentioned in the post) that the "so" is separated from "palden" (as prefixes are sometimes separated in modern German), and it is not "...
so nim gas mich o", but "palden probieren
so, ...", with "palden" and "so" making the equivalent of "sobald".
Simple future (which would fit "palden" simply as "soon", without the need of "sobald") is "probieren" in all cases.
I like the idea of "pbren" as a
template medical/apothecary abbreviation which could mean a
specific grammatical form. It is not likely to be "probiert" (we would probably have had the ending "t" otherwise), but I suspect that the strange tail of the "n" (?) not observed elsewhere is not for nothing, so I would not be surprised that that is a grammar marker, and the whole abbreviation stands, e.g., for "probierend".
Quote:About the "try, attempt" in general, I wonder whether this is used in medieval prescriptions? It almost smells like empiricism. I'm used to reading more authoritative statements like "to cure a headache, take this plant". But I might be wrong about this?
Yes, I agree, it would be of great interest to find similar phrasings. "Probieren" is "try out", "taste", "sample" or "validate", of which the first two meanings are close to our context. Mind that empiricism is inseparable from medicine. When one is ill, he "tries out" this and that.
(04-01-2020, 02:59 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have now also found the word "valsen" in German texts.
I've seen "vals" in Lexer for "falsehood" or "fraudulent person", but the main issue here is that those two first letters really look like "p".