LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.06.04 (03) [E]

Sat Jun 4 16:18:27 UTC 2005

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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.05.03 (03) [E]

"They both need modernization to get anywhere"

Please be careful. Chinese survives to this day by adapting descriptions to
things of modernity. I talked to my friends tonight on the lightning wire.
Sometimes "modernization" means the introduction of foreign words for modern
things and concepts. Why do that when lightning wires and nets (from Spanish
red) still exist?
Ben

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From: Mike Morgan <Mike.Morgan at mb3.seikyou.ne.jp>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.05.03 (03) [E]

Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net> wrote of a Sprachbund of Irish Gaelic
with English. ... Hmmm. Actually I can think of a healthy amount of
borrowing in both directions between the two ... though for English, only
into the Irish variety. A Sprachbund is, to me, much MORE than just
borrowing. Unless by "borrowing" you mean massive structural borrowing on
all levels. I think the relationship between the two languages falls FAR
short of that.

As for the East/South East Asian Sprachbund, I would be much more inclined
to agree. Though as for the statement that

> Chinese has the characters, which
> screw people up royally.

Actually, for some of us, the characters (the written ones, but also the
ones walking around) are the saving grace. And, so on a recent first trip to
Vietnam, I found it very helpful to convert the romanized (chu viet) into
characters (chu nom), then to Japanese "kango" (wordsof Chinese origin). ...
I suspect though, that given the historical changes in pronunciation, and
the diverse dialects of Chinese that "lent" their words to Vietnamese vs
Japanese, these "cognates" are pretty opaque to most Japanese visitors to
Vietnam. I don't know if it's my being a historical-comparative linguist
with a tendency to do sound-change correspondences in my head unconsciously,
or the distance from the languages involved that lets me see the forest AND
the trees. (^u^)

Mike Morgan
KCUFS
Kobe, JAPAN

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From: Mike Morgan <Mike.Morgan at mb3.seikyou.ne.jp>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.05.03 (03) [E]

Groetjes! Mike (aka Mihangel aka Micheal ... though the last caused me to
flunk an other flawless spelling test when I was in 3rd grade) Mogran here
from Osaka. Though I usually post when I'm trying to put off doing something
like grading, I'm not sure what I'm avoiding doing today; it can't be
grading since I've put off avoiding grading until tomorrow ... :-)

R/R said, in response to what I believe was a question from Ed on the
you/thou (aka "familiar" and "polite" forms) distinction, that:

> The Semitic and
> Altaic languages, for example, have basically no such structural
> distinctions (and Altaic does not have gender distinction either).

Excuse me?! What Altaic languages are you talking about? The "siz"/"sen"
distinction is alive and well in Republican Turkish (for example, pulling
from my shelf the first volume of "Hızlı Gazeteci" -- a left-leaning comic
strip that helped me learn Turkish when it occurred in the pages of
Cumhuriyet -- that comes to hand -- it happens to be "Bacı" -- frame 3 has a
girl (okay, she looks vaguely Kurdish to me ... maybe it's just me, but that
would be another motivation for the use of "politer" forms, in addition to
age and sex) asking a soldier (without a doubt NOT Kurdish, and a
represenative of "authority", another motivator of "polite" forms) for
directions, and he uses "sen" (actually the dative "sana") and she uses
"siz" (actually the possessive suffix "-iniz"). There is no one else in the
frame or any subsequent frames in the scene, so the girl is obviously
talking to ONE person ... using the "polite" form.  The distinction is found
in all "pronominal" forms (including verb endings).  These "polite" forms
are similar to French "vous" and German "Sie" in that they are non-singular,
though in Turkic they originate as collectives (not plurals per se)
in -(i)z, and can take an additonal plural affix -lAr (e.g. sizler).

And it is not just "European" Turkic that is this way. For example (taking
almost as distant an example as possible): Uzbek has the expression
"сизлаб" сўзлашмоқ  /sizlab sözlaşmoq/ "to be on formal terms
with" (lit. "to speak with "siz" (Sie/vous))

> I have a hunch that such distinctions on a lexical and
> morphological come are pretty late in the development.

This, MAY in fact be true. Republican Turkish has had considerable Euroepean
influence (from languages with the "vos"/"tu") distinction) and most of the
Central Asian Turkic languages have had from Russian 8which has the same
distinction).

In fact, none of thre grammars of the "older" Turkic languages I have to
hand (von Gabain's Eskı Türkçenın Grameri, Hacıeminoğlu's Karahanlı Türkçesı
Grameri, Karamanlıoğlu's Kıpçak Türkçesi Grameri, and Tekın's Orhon Türkçesi
Grameri) seem to have  anything to say on the subject; HOWEVER, the Soviet
Academy of Sciences' Древнетюркский словарь (Old Turkic
Dictionary - 1969) entry for siz quite clearly states that it is used for
polite reference to a single individual (with a reference to MK I 339, MK
being Maxmud Kashgar's dictionaryof Turkic dialects from the 11th century
... not exactly recent.)

So, Ron, were you talking about some other Altaic languages (e.g. non-Turkic
ones)? I'll haveto admit that my Tungusic is more non-existent thn rusty
(and the scholar's last resort -- reference books -- are no help, the
grammars, etc I have for Manchu and Evenki have zilch to say on the matter,
postive or negative).

So maybe you were talking about Mongolian, where I believe you are (at least
for Khalkha) 100% correct.

> However,
> you do not necessarily have to have lexical and morphological means of
> expressing deference or its opposite.  You can express such distinctions
> by
> means of tone and idiom, for example.

True ... as in modern English, et al.

Mike Morgan
KCUFS
Osaka, Japan

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

Thanks for calling me on that one, Mike.  I should have thought things
through or added a disclaimer ... or somethin'.

What I had in mind was *inherent* traits.  Deferential/polite pronouns (and
some verb forms) have been introduced into the "main" Turkic languages or
standard varieties under non-Turkic influence, beginning with urban
varieties that had contacts with Iranic and other language varieties.
(Incidentally, by the same way gender distinction in nouns wanted to creep
in, largely unsuccessfully so.)  When we talk about Altaic, though, and do
not count Japanese and Korean as full members, we have a preponderance of
non-distinguishing varieties, not only in Mongolic but especially in
Tungusic (which distinguish pretty much everything but gender and social
status, though Manchu is a bit of an exception) as well as in many "minor"
Turkic languages that have not been urbanized, especially those whose
speakers have not been Islamicized, such as those of Siberia and Mongolia.
Turkish, followed by Azeri and Uzbek, is about as far removed from original,
basic Turkic structure as you can go, not surprisingly so, considering its
history and the influences and substrates it has ample evidence of.  Despite
the number of its speakers, it should never be taken as representative of
Turkic, definitely not of Altaic.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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