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<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br></div><div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
L O W L A N D S - L - 13 July 2008 - Volume 04<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">-------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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========================================================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.12 (04) [E]<br><br></span><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
From: <span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">jonny</span> <span><<a href="mailto:jonny.meibohm@arcor.de" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jonny.meibohm@arcor.de</a>></span><br>Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.09 (03) [E]<br>
<br></div>
<div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<div><div class="Ih2E3d">
<div><span>How would you get out of this tight spot if switching to the present tense:</span></div>
<div>" <span>Look- just over there t</span>hey <span>is (are?) running</span> down the street to the left <span><span><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><font color="#000000" size="3">side! And now they enter(s?) their car!"</font></span></span></span></div>
<div align="left"> </div></div><font color="#888888">
<div align="left">Jonny Meibohm</div></font></div></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Probably by skipping the pronoun altogether:
</span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">"Look - there! - running down the street on the left!"</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul Finlow-Bates</div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(185, 0, 56);">Sandy Fleming</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:sandy@scotstext.org">sandy@scotstext.org</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.08 (03) [E]</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">> From: jonny <</span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="mailto:jonny.meibohm@arcor.de">jonny.meibohm@arcor.de</a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> Subject: LL-L "Grammar"</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> Beste Lowlanners abroad,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> how do you in English use the gender of the word _person_ (neuter) in</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> the following context?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> Just imagine, you watched a person which (or who?) is suspected to</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> have been involved in a crime. Because it was dark, you could not see,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> if it had been a man or a woman. How do you tell it the police</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> constable?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> "I saw a tall person with a black hat and a grey coat. (_He_? _She_?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> _It_?) ran down the street to the left side." It should be 'it', I</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> guess? But it sounds in a certain way strange for me.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> (If I would replace _person_ by 'individual' my problem wouldn't be</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> solved!)</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
> In Low Saxon we have got the same problem: "Ick hebb eyn' Perzoun</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
As always, any random language problems caused by the chaotic historical</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
development of grammar can be solved by correct use of idiom and</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
exposition.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
"I saw someone in a black hat and grey coat running down the left side</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
of the street."</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Idiomatic resolution aside, perhaps one problem here is the obsession</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
with grammatical gender that occurs in some language groups?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Do Finns have more problems describing incidents to the police because</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
their language lacks grammatical gender? Are the Hungarian courts</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
plagued by their inability to continually express whether a suspect was</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
a man or a woman?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Native language speakers tend to think that the grammatical features of</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
their language represent absolute necessities in self-expression, so</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
that, for example, you see English-speaking signers who "don't get it"</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
signing "woman it" and "man it" in BSL for "she" and "he".</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
I think this is also a big stumbling block for those trying to devise</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
world languages: Volapuk had four noun cases because the inventor spoke</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
German and couldn't see how to do without them, while although "Dr</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Esperanto" got rid of most noun inflections, he simply couldn't get</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
through the day without his accusative fix.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
What should we discard in inventing a world language?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
o gender: pointless;</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
o plurals: useless;</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
o verb tense: worse than useless;</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
o word inflections: too complicated;</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
and many other silly foibles that we consider indispensable, no doubt!</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#888888"><br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">----------</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>>
<br>
Subject: Grammar<br><br>That Sandy of ours is back with a vengeance! How did we manage without his sober voice?<br><br>The example of constructed languages is an excellent one I think. There are so many redundant grammatical features most people simply assume are necessary. This is why I believe that people who take it upon themselves to construct languages for global communication ought to familiarize themselves with the structures of languages that belong to a range of families. Among the Sino-Tibetan languages, for example, take the Chinese ones...<br>
</span></font><ul style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Gender: <b>none</b></span></font><b></b></li><li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Plural: <b>only in three personal pronouns</b></span></font></li>
<li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Verb tense: <b>none, except one particle expressing change and another expressing progress</b></span></font></li><li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Word inflection: <b>none</b></span></font></li>
</ul><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">As in the case of English, sentence structure is rigid because it plays an important grammatical role.<br><br>This is similar in pidgins and creoles, which also use tense and aspectual markers where necessary, for instance in Tok Pisin (Neo Melanesian, Papua New Guinea):<br>
<br></span></font><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>Em <b>i bin</b> slip.</i> (< he been)<br>
He/she/it slept.<br><br><i>Em i slip <b>i stap</b>. </i>(< he stop)<br></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He/she/it</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> is sleeping.<br>
</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><br>Em <b>i bin</b> slip </i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i> <b>i stap</b></i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>.</i> (< he been, he stop)<br>
He/she/it was sleeping.</span></font><br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br><i>Em i slip <b>pinis</b>.</i> (< finish)<br></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He/she/it (has)</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> slept.<br>
<br></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>Em </i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><b>i bin</b> </i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>slip <b>pinis</b>.</i> (< </span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">he been, </span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">finish)<br>
</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He/she/it had</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> slept.</span></font><br>
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br><i>Em <b>bai</b> i slip. ~ <b>Bai</b> em i slip.</i> (< by and by)<br></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He/she/it will sleep.<br>
<br></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>Em <b>bai</b> i slip</i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i> <b>pinis</b></i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>. ~ <b>Bai</b> em i slip</i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i> <b>pinis</b></i></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>.</i> (< by and by, finish)<br>
</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He/she/it will have slept.</span></font><br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The particle <i>i</i> (< he) marks the actual verb (to distinguish it from verb-derived markers), and two of them in a row are reduced to one.<br>
<br>Regards,<br>Reinhard/Ron</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></font><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></font></div><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br></span></font>
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