LL-L "Syntax" 2004.09.04 (05) [E/German]

Sat Sep 4 23:52:42 UTC 2004

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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: Jan Strunk <strunkjan at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2004.09.04 (02) [E]

Hallo!

Here come my two cents...
> The reason that this happened is, i believe, a grammatical construction in
> Limburgish. I hear it very seldom but when i do, it's pronounced loud and
> clear. My father is a very cordial man, but when he gets really angry (i'm
> less cordial) he inserts a clear, stressed en ( the e like in Eng.
> pen),between subject and verb. For example
>
> jij gaat naar de kerk ( you go to the church)
> jij en gaat naar de kerk
>
> jij gaat niet naar de fuif (you don't go to the party)
> jij en gaat niet naar de fuif
>
> ik ga naar huis (i go home)
> ik en ga naar huis
>
> Mostly the latter construction is used to end a discussion (ik ga niet-jij
> gaat wel-nee, ik ga niet- jij en gaat!) and it works very wel. Since i
only
> hear it in quite tensed situations, i turned Mrs. Hartland in an agressor,
> while nothing in the context would favour such a thought. I was mislead by
> an artefact, if yu-n and jij-en were cognate at all. It was probably not
> only used in escalating discussions, but my father simply turned to an
older
> version of his language when he got really angry.

A phrase like "jij en gaat niet naar de fuif" sounds very much like examples
from Middle Low Saxon, Middle Dutch, and Middle High German where
the old Germanic negative element "ne" was weakened into a proclitic
version (i.e. one that phonetically leans onto the following word) which
could
no longer be used to mark negation of a sentence alone.

OHG: ih ne gango (hope that's right... Don't have a grammar here now)
MHG ih en gan
later: ih en gan niht (with second negator)
today: ich gehe nicht.

The same development as far as I now took place in Dutch and Low Saxon.

So, I propose that your "en" might have developped from a use as an emphatic
second negator first in negative sentences.

E.g. jij gaat niet (normal version)
       jij en gaat niet (emphatic version)

and has spread to positive sentences too.

       jij gaat (normal version)
       jij en gaat (emphatic version)

I am not totally sure that this is plausible because "en" was a proclitic
(i.e. phonologically weak element)
in earlier stages of the West Germanic languages. And such weak elements
often do not allow for emphatic
stress... So, there might be totally different history. But it might be a
possibility. The question, I guess, can only
be answered by knowing when and where this construction came up and whether
there are other possible sources...

Guedgaon!

Jan Strunk
strunk at linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
P.S.: Moin Ron! Meister Johann is seit 3 Monaten zurück im Ruhrpott un au
widda anna Ruhr-Uni in Bochum, weiss abba noni genau watta als nächstet
macht.... Also ma kucken! Abba
wenichstens issa getz Mitglied vonnet INS in Bremen...

----------

From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Syntax

Jo you wrote:

>- is ain't a contraction of  am not ? It seems semanticly misused
(e.g.http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/drlang003.html)
>- isn't is clearly a contraction of is not, but is it modeled after an
older form? No other language seems to use it as often, isn't it?<

"Ain't" is used in place of am not, are not, is not, has not, have not.
Whether it is strictly a contraction of each of these I don't know. It could
have arisen once for one of the persons of the verb "be", for example, and
then have been transferred to the others.

Why should "isn't" be modelled on something else? Your use of "isn't" at the
end of this quote is not standard English. It is heard most in varieties
spoken in and by people from Asia - I know it from the Indian Sub-Continent
and Hong Kong. This "incorrect" use probably contributes greatly to the
number of utterances.

I can't remember the grammatical name for it but in Standard English we have
the habit of asking a certain type of question in the forms
- You did do your homework last night, didn't you?
- You have walked the dog, haven't you?
- Captain Webb was the first man to swim the Channel, wasn't he?
- He swam the Channel, didn't he?
This last form (replacement of verb with the dummy verb "do" in the correct
tense) seems particularly difficult for non-native speakers to grasp.

In all these cases you find "isn't it" in Asian varieties of English. If you
want an explanation you could say it is short for "isn't it so?". In Common
English Demotic we now have the form "innit" used in this same way.

But there is the complication that these phrases can all be used as
intensifiers or as simple verbal noise. In parallel with "innit" we hear
"no at mean" [@ = schwa], "n'mean" or some other variant, ie "[do you] know
what I mean?" which often just marks the end of the utterance. An example of
the intensifying use can be heard in the soaps. Mockney gangsters say things
like: "I give 'im a spankin', di:n [didn't] I?", which being interpreted
means "I aver that I beat him nearly to death." It is not a question and it
doesn't require an answer.

The French say "n'est-ce pas?" and most Germans "nicht (wahr)?". In S
Germany, Austria and Switzerland they do things differently, of course. The
most common word used in this sense is "gelt/gell/gelle". Duden gives this
as derived from the 3 sing subj of "gelten", equivalent to "es moege
gelten". But Swiss are prone to see "gell" as a 2 pers sing form and find it
offensive from a person with whom they don't use "du". Duden's "Wie sagt man
in der Schweiz?" doesn't explain how they get round this, but "Wie sagt man
in Oesterreich?" says that in Austria the polite form is "geln S'?".

I got the impression in Austria that "gel" was used very much more
frequently than "nicht wahr" is used elsewhere but it may have stood out
just because it was unfamiliar. Whether we use our English varieties of this
marker more or less than speakers of other languages I don't know.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

----------

John:

> I can't remember the grammatical name for it but in Standard English
> we have the habit of asking a certain type of question in the forms

"Tag(-type/style) question," or "tag(ged) question?

Just for the sake of "completion," in in the North Saxon dialects of
Lowlands Saxon (Low German) it's _..., ne?_ [nE] or _..., ni?_ [nI].  It's
_..., ne?_ [nE] in many North German dialects as well, _..., nich?_ [nIC] on
a somewhat higher level.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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