LL-L "Morphology" 2003.10.01 (08) [E]

Wed Oct 1 18:05:14 UTC 2003

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: burgdal32admin <burgdal32 at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2003.09.30 (04) [E]
  From: Alfred Brothers <alfredb at erols.com>
  Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2003.09.29 (06) [E]

  Jan Strunk wrote:

    Examples from my dialect that does not use mir for the first person
plural
    nominative:
    hat's /hatet from hat es / hat et (it has)
    hamma from haben wir (have we)

Flemish:
hèt /hètet /t' èt/ hètetet (has it/it has)
hème (have we)

    In some dialects, people have started using the fused form of the
pronoun
    in other contexts, such as in front of the verb, too.
    Bavarian: mir ham (we have)
    's hot (es hat)
Flemish: m'hèn (we have)

  Ron responded:

    Sure, in the north, too, you'll hear _hammia_, _hamma_ etc. for _haben
wir_
    ("have we"), in Hamburg Missingsch _haamwiä_ in more careful mode and

  _haamiä_ when spoken more rapidly, also _geemwiä_ ~ _geemiä_ for _geben
wir_
  ("give we"), etc. (_haamwia_ ~ _haamia_ and _geemwia_ ~ _geemia_ in
Berlin,
  right?). However, it's always _wiä_ (and _wia_) where this sort of liaison
  is not possible.
Flemish:
gev'me (D: geven wij)

  Jan's assertion that the generally accepted explanation among Germanic
  linguists is that the assimilation of "wir" to these verbs did lead to
  the resulting "mir" form becoming the standard form even when preceding
  the verb in Central and Upper German dialects. (See below for the Low
  German/Low Saxon explanation.) Although it may seem to be a stretch at
  first, consider the following (which applies to High German dialects
only):

  1) In inverted word order, if the pronoun is stressed, the m- remains.
  Ordinary _hamma_ becomes _hamMIR_, never _haamwiä_ as you point out
  happens in careful Hamburg Missingsch speech. This in itself reinforces
  the independence of the word. (Some rural Bavarian dialects can even use
  the pronoun twice, once before and once after: _mia samma_ (wir sind).)

Flemish:
Me zin wydre (we are)

  2) None of the South German dialects have a simple past tense form.
  Every sentence in the past must consist of a _hamma_ or _simma_
Lemish:
hème/zime (have we / are we)

  (or
  something similar) when inverted order is necessary. So these two verbs
  alone, in addition to some other rather common "-m" ending verbs such as
  _geem, leem, schreim, etc._, far outnumber the verbs whose endings might
  not cause the _wir_ to _mir_ shift.

  3) Even dialects that have lost their final -n had it at some time in
  their history. So _habbe mir_ > _mir habbe_ (or _hawwe mir_, etc.) most
  likely arose after the _wir > mir_ shift took place. In addition, almost
  all southern dialects have special forms of _haben_, such as _han, hand,
  ham, hen, hend_, etc. These could easily have caused the shift. Forms
  you may hear today in areas where -n is dropped, such as _hawwe mir_,
  are usually half-dialect.

Flemish:
Hè'we = hème (have we)Both are equally used.
  4) Once the sound of -MIR became strong enough to be felt as a separate
  word, false division of the verb from its subject was easy. It also
  happened in the second person plural in many south German dialects:
  _ihr_ frequently becomes _dihr_ based on forms like _hend ihr_.
  Pennsylvania German also recognizes _nihr_ as well as _dihr_ and _ihr_
  based on _henn ihr_.
Femish:
Hèndre (have there/has somebody)

    I have done a bit more reading about it, and it turns out that _mir_
etc.
    for 'we' is extremely widespread, if not predominant, in non-Standard
    German, almost all the way north to the Lowlands Saxon (Low German)
    borderline, and from formerly German-speaking areas in today's Poland
and
    Russia all the way west to the Moselle area and, as we have now heard,
all
    the way into the Flemish area. Besides, as I mentioned, 'we' is
_mir_(???) in Yiddish as well, in both Western and Eastern Yiddish, I
believe, and in
    this case this points to the _wir_ > _mir_ shift going back quite a few
    centuries and to the general Rhenish area. Moreover, as far as I know,
    _wir_ > _mir_ also occurred in dialects in which the infinitive and
plural
    endings are not _-(e)n_ but _-e_ (e.g., _mir habbe_ -> _habbe mir_).
  To bring this back to the Lowlands topic, Russ points out that this
  bilabial pronunciation of /w-/ in MHG did not exist in LG (his
  abbreviation for Low German/Low Saxon), that the sound existed as a
  labio-dental and was found in all LG dialects. When the Central and
  Upper German /w-/ also became labio-dental, there was still a difference
  in the point of articulation between the North German/Saxon and the
  South German pronunciation of the same letter. This stronger [v]
  pronunciation of North German /w-/ could very well account for the fact
  that the _wir_ to _mir_ change didn't take place under all
  circumstances, viz., when inversion was not necessary or the preceding
  sound was not one which might produce a final -m. It would also explain
  why in Luc's West Flemish dialect the shift did occur. (I am assuming
  from the rest of his examples that final -n ?is retained in his dialect.)
  I'd be curious to hear where else, if anywhere, it is found in the
  Netherlands.

  In the back of my mind, there is something telling me that I also ran
  across this shift in one of the dialects of the Scandinavian languages,
  too, but I may be mistaken. It certainly wouldn't fit in the theory
  above, although there are always exceptions. If I ever locate it, I'll
  let you know.

  Regards,
  Alfred Brothers
Groetjes
luc vanbrabant
oekene

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