LL-L "Grammar" 2005.08.08 (03) [E]

Tue Aug 9 16:40:58 UTC 2005

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From: Dan Prohaska <danielprohaska at bluewin.ch>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar"

Dear List,
Sorry I took a while to respond to this.

I'm quite sure that the use of "do" as an auxiliary or rather a formative 
word is much older in Germanic. It is hard to imagine that the past tense 
typical of Germanic weak verbs is not formed with the same root that 
eventually ended up as "do" in English.

The formation is still quite transparent in Gothic, e.g.: <hausi-dedum> "we 
heard". So the formation was something like "hear-did". I speech suca form 
would have become contracted and lost its 'identity' as a separate verb and 
became a morphological marker. A similar development happened in the pronace 
languages with the construction "amare-habeo".

Dan

***

From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.06.28 (09) [E/LS]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>I often wonder if English uses of auxiliary 'do' had their roots in spoken
forms of Old Saxon.<

I am sure they do.

What is more, I think there may be a substratum of 'dialect' / grammatical
concept underlying the Germanic here as I have examples of Swiss and
Austrian dialects that also use the auxiliary 'do' - for emphasis and
negation!

Perhaps the Celtic language/s that prevailed before the Roman used
auxiliaries extensively??????
Welsh uses the verb 'to be' and so does Spanish ( to an extent??)

Does Gothic and / or the Scandanavian languages use 'to do' ot to be' as
auxiliaries?
As they are Germanic without Celtic influence, if they don't, it would
strengthen the case for a Celtic influence on the use of auxiliaries.

There is another argument - that creoles tend to create compound tenses in
order to cope: rather than learn a complex system of tenses, they develop
verb + infinitive or verb + past participle becaus eit is easier.

In which case it could just be the result of tweo cultures mixing. But it
is interestingt hat it is widespread among German grass roots
languages...................... which usually means old!

Thanks for the great explantion: safely saved for future reference!

Heather

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Grammar

Hey, Heather!

Interesting!  But apparently Continental Saxon wasn't spoken in previously
Celtic-speaking areas.  We don't really seem to know what kinds of languages
used to be used in the areas to which it first spread.  So we really don't
have a clue about substrates other than Slavonic and Baltic ones in the east
and Anglish and Norse ones in the north.

Celts did live farther west (and in the south), in parts of what later
became Franconian-speaking, the direction from which the Saxons were
eventually conquered.  The Romans never succeeded in doing so.

The theory of simplification in the process of creolization sounds plausible
to me.  Might the disappearance of preterite forms be a part of that too?
This is what happened in both Yiddish and Missingsch (German dialects on Low
Saxon substrates).  In Low Saxon, preterites tend to be avoided in Low Saxon
too.  Their use is more extensive in literature, especially in folktales.

As for "do" as an auxiliary, it did not only carry over from Low Saxon to
Missingsch but in some Missingsch varieties, such as the one of Hamburg it
has been developed even further by restricting the use of _tun_ (to do) to
auxiliary function and assigning the fomer main verb status of _tun_ (LS
_dou(e)n_) to _machen_ (LS _maken_ 'to make').  You can tell that many North
Saxon dialects have this tendency already, but _dou(e)n_ can still be used
as a main verb (especially where _maken_ could be interpreted as literally
'to make', 'to create').  Hamburg Missingsch regularized this.

LS: So wat dou ik nich. (~ So wat maak ik nich.)
HM: Sowas machich nich.
SG: Soetwas tue ich nicht.
"I don't do a thing like that", "I wouldn't do a thing like that."

LS: Dat hev ik nich daan. (~ So wat hev ik nich maakt.)
HM: Das habbich nich gemach(t).
SG: Das habe ich nicht getan.
"I haven't done thing like that", "I didn't do a thing like that."

LS: So wat maak ik nich.
HM: Sowas machich nich.
SG: Soetwas mache ich nicht.
"I don't make a thing like that", "I wouldn't make a thing like that."

LS: Dat mag ik nich.  ([max])
HM: Das machich nich.
SG: Das mag ich nicht. ([ma:k])
"I don't like that."

LS: So wat dou ik nich maken.
HM: Sowas tuich nich machn.
SG: Soetwas mache ich nicht.
"I don't make a thing like that", "I wouldn't make a thing like that."

LS: Bang maken dayst (du) my nich.
HM: Angsmachn tuus(su) mich nich.
SG: Du machst mich nicht bang. ~ Du machst mir keine Angst.
"You don't scare me", "You scaring me? No way!"

The only context in which I believe _tuun_ 'to do' can (or must) be used as
a main verb in Hamburg Missingsch is if otherwise _mögen_ 'to like' (_ich
mach_) "clashes" with _machen_ 'to make', 'to do' (_ich mach_); e.g.,

HM: (*)Sowas machich nich machn.
HM: Sowas machich nich tuun.
"I don't like doing a thing like that."

The first (*) might be marginally possible, but I would find it forced and
would therefore interprete it as "I don't like making a thing like that."

Is this at all of interest to you, Heather?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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