LL-L "Grammar" 2009.05.28 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 28 May 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Mike Morgan <mwmosaka at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2009.05.28 (01) [EN]

Hi again all,

Heather replied to my comments:
> I'm not sure where Michael found his 80 odd examples from.  I have just
googled for 'a half
> ate sandwich' and no examples appeared.

You get more without the extra indefinite article, but even 'A half ate
sandwich' turns up 12 on my google search... a re-search turned up the same
approximate number: 80 plus for the phrase w/o "A" ...

BUT, maybe google search is like lots of linguistic informatants: they tell
you waht you want to hear and so answers will vary from user to user... (And
to everyone except mom when she's mad at me, I am just Mike)

> perhaps these people were speaking sloppily and made mistakes! People do ,
you know!

Yes, and one man's messy desk is another's way of doing business!

> archaisms often linger longest in 'new' versions of a language ( american
Fall / gotten)

And maybe just as often in 'old' versions?

> appear not very current - in America, they certainly aren't here in the
UK.

We must however remember that the internet, for all its informality, is
STILL a written medium, and that MOST the people using it were educated in
what was "proper" in writing. SO chances that deviations from written
standard are UNDER-estimated by google seraches, not over...

So I am not saying that a number like "80 plus" PROVES popularity or NOT...
and CERTAINLY not that it shows "correctness". For example, if I type in the
single word "whom" I get 147 MILLION hits on google ... and unless you go
through them somehow it is hard to say how many of them are just saying
simply that the rule we learned in school is DEAD! (and so to a
descriptivist dead WRONG)

We often make definitive statements, here and elsewhere, and I am certaily
not innocent of that "crime". But, in truth, the statement that I feel MOST
certain of is of the "*I* wouldn't /can't say that" type ... and even there,
sometimes, I realise later I was wrong!

PS I tend to be as excited by an asterisk in front of an "ungrammatical"
sentence as I am by the asterisk in front of a reconstructed
proto-Dene-Basque word...

mike || U C > || мика  || माईक || マイク || ሚካኤል
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++
          (( Michael W Morgan, PhD ))
    to be Assistant Professor in Linguistics
Ethiopian Sign Language & Deaf Studies Program
      Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
וואָס ×œ×¢× ×’×¢×¨ אַ ×‘×œ×™× ×“×¢×¨ לעבט, אַלץ מער זעט ער.
The longer a blind man lives, the more he sees.

----------

From: Mike Morgan <mwmosaka at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2009.05.27 (06) [EN]


Dear Cheryl & Kevin

Subject: LL-L "Grammar"

You wrote:
> What about:
> His eyes were sunken.
> Or…
> The ship was sunken when they found it.  Vs.
> The ship was sunk off the coast of Florida 400 years ago.  Vs.
> The ship sank off the coast of Florida 400 years ago.

No, it doesn't work like that. Allow me to rephrase... I'm sure it doesn't
work like that.

Here goes:
The galleon was sunk off the coast of Florida 400 years ago.
The sunken galleon yielded a cargo of doubloons.
& as follows:
'The sailor was drunk' aot 'the drunken sailor'
'Her hair was of gold'  aot 'her golden hair'
'His suit was of fine wool' aot 'his fine woolen suit'

The system has broken down of course, English being the international
working argot that it always was, hostage to any passing linguistic eddy.
Consider 'open' - but 'ope' is dialect, 'broken' & 'broke'. 'Happen' yes,
but no 'hap', though you get 'hapless'.

However, in Afrikaans we still have a strong degree of consistancy in
something similar:
'Die deur is oop' aot 'die ope deur' (The open door).
'die omie is rustig' aot ' 'die rustige omie' (the extremely laid-back
[restful] dear uncle).
'die draad is kort' aot 'die korte draad' (the short thread).

The rule in Afrikaans is that the adjective or adverb immediately preceding
the relevant noun or verb becomes part of a word-pair, & the relationship is
indicated by the '-e' suffix.

Having gone that far, once in less formal conversation a complete sentence
has introduced the subject, the noun or verb can be dropped, & the verb
stands in .for the whole pair.
For example:
'die dierbare kind' is followed later by reference only to 'die dierbare'
(the darling one).
'die slimme skepsel' to 'die slimme' (the sly creature [a devius fellow]).
'Die skone jagt' (the trim-lined jacht) to 'die skone' (the trim one).
This last example is to my mind a survival of the Dutch substratum in
American English. What else is a 'schooner' but a trim-lined yacht?

All Yrs,
Mark

•

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