LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.26 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 26 April 2006 * Volume 05
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From: "Mark Dreyer" <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.25 (07) [A/D/E]

Dear Ron & All:

Subject: LL-L "Grammar"

Ron said;
I can't help getting rid of this notion that what tended to happen in the
early development from Lowlandic varieties to Afrikaans was a preference for
using emphatics as default expressions...

I'm inclined to agree. In my opinion at least half language developments
follow a perceived need, as a contribution to comprehension. So also for the
emphatic negative, as though to qualify a statement with "...& I mean it!"
That exclamation mark is an example of what I'm referring to. Some
information is passed through conversation that is not derived from the
language, but the tone (I'm not referring here to languages that use tone
for articulation). We close an emphatic statement or an exclamation with an
emphatic tone, & in writing that would be lost, unless we used an
exclamation mark. So also for the rising tone (should I be saying
inflection?) & a question mark following a question. I've heard of some
old-time grammarian who felt English also needed an irony mark!?

The trouble is that a negative statement often demands more than the
unemphatic statement that it 'negates', in the mind of the speaker, & we
don't seem to have a tonal device in our spoken language to carry it across,
as an exclamation mark might serve in written language. As I see it the
closing negative is a useful formalised grammatical device in spoken
Afrikaans for that emphesis, & for which we have no alternative resource
like a rising tone...

Also: In closing, the negative in the analytically appropriate position that
totally reverses the meaning of a statement could possibly be missed in
casual speech, were it not for the 'nie' at the last, the last thing your
conversant will hear in your statement. It is a _useful_ redundancy.

Yrs,
Mark

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