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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">L O W L A N D S - L - 13 October 2009 - Volume 01</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <</font><a href="mailto:Dutchmatters@comcast.net"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Dutchmatters@comcast.net</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </font>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.11 (01) [DE-EN-NL]</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Re: Gender</font></div></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Hi Diederik, Theo, Marlou and Ron. I knew it was a mess, now the mess is even bigger. But, here is the next question; given the fact that Germanic Language Speakers, do not always agree on the gender of nouns, even in the same language group, who of you knows what the original genders in early Germanic languages were. I think the fact that all those “-mut” nouns have genders depending on psychological attitudes involved point at “Rhyme and reason”. I also have the feeling that nouns which mean something that the male of the species made, ( NL Huis, Gat, Blok) to name a few got the neutral article for a reason. However, this does not always hold up and a lot of “de” nouns for man made things are floating around. They maybe pertain to later technologies. Did anybody ever do a study into the history of the genders? </font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Jacqueline BdJ</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Seattle US</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">From: Daniel Prohaska <</font><a href="mailto:daniel@ryan-prohaska.com"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">daniel@ryan-prohaska.com</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </font>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Subject: "Language varieties" 2009.10.12 (04) [EN]</font></div></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Mark, </font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">As far as I can make out Romanian also lost a great number of nominal inflections, or what would you say <lup> as opposed to Latin <lupus> represents? I think the partial retention of a case system I Romanian has two reasons, one owing to internal developments and the other owing to external influence. Romanian, unlike other Romance language post-positions the article, meaning the definite article was placed behind the noun it describes rather than before (similar to the Scandinavian languages). So, “the wolf” was not *ille (iste) lupus as in most other Romance languages, but *lupus ille. The nominal endings and their meaningfulness were somewhat “protected” by this use of the article, so while Romanian un lup “a wolf” has no nominal ending, it reappears in lupul “the wolf”.</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The other reason is that Romanian was in contact with case distinguishing languages such as South Slavic and Greek, though we know little about Dacian and its possible function of a substrate language. </font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The Western-/ Eastern-Romance split is arbitrary. There are several Italian dialects that don’t fit into either box, as you said, but there’s also Dalmatian, which, though heavily influenced by the Venetian, shows an eastern Romance consonantism, while having a more western Romance vocalism. </font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The date of the Romans abandoning a province is less important it seems in the initial development of the Romance language than the date Latin was introduced in a particular province. Ibero- and Gallo-Romance show conservatism in certain early features of development of spoken Latin in comparison to colonies established later, while Romanian is relatively progressive and more so, Italian itself, even if later developments carry the resulting Romance language further away (French) from Latin phonologically than the early-progressive varieties (Italian, Romanian). Of course, some early-conservative varieties stay conservative, like Sardinian.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">As a summary, I would say, the same tendency towards analytic structure is there in Romanian as is found in the other Romance languages, but obviously slower in development.</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Dan </font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">From: Brooks, Mark <</font><a href="mailto:mark.brooks@twc.state.tx.us"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">mark.brooks@twc.state.tx.us</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">></font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.12 (03) [EN]</font></div>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">“Yes, Ron and Sandy, an interesting idea. Let me go on to argue with myself for a moment ;-). Let’s take the case of the Romance languages. We could say that they descended from the language spoken in the Roman Empire. That language evolved into many different ones, but for the sake of my example, let’s look at the major Western Romance languages and one of the Eastern ones. Italian seems to fit into both in some ways, but for the purpose of my argument, let’s put it in the Western group.</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">As far as I can tell Spanish, French, Catalan, Portuguese, et al. lost the case endings on nouns. At least let’s say that in a general sense. But, Romanian has retained some up until today. Now, Romanian surely had as much (or even more) contact with other languages as the Western group. In fact, I believe Rome withdrew from Dacia (present day Romania more or less) even earlier than it did from the Western provinces. So, what would explain that? Of course, each language has its own characteristics just like people do, but assuming that the tendency to analytic structure applies universally, it seems to have somewhat by-passed Romanian.</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">True, Romanian has lost some of the cases and might still have the “analytic” change going on, but I wonder about the difference.</font></div>
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<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" color="#000099">Mark Brooks“</font></div></blockquote>
<div><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> ----------<br><br>From: R. F. Hahn <</font><a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">sassisch@yahoo.com</font></a><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">><br>
Subject: Language varieities<br><br></font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Hi, Dan!</font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">It’s so good to hear from you!</font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">You went pretty much where I thought I’d go in responding to Mark’s question, except you did it more eruditely than I would have done it.</font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Since Dacian (often considered connected with Thracian) was an early Indo-European language it is not unreasonable to guess that it had a fairly complex sort of morphology.</font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Another thing we need to consider is that in Roman times the gap between the classically based written Latin language and the everyday spoken (“vulgar”) Latin language kept widening. What led to this is another question, but we might assume that the second-language use and eventual adoption of Latin by originally non-Romans played a role. My point is that, aside from Romanian-internal developments (in which Greek and Slavic substrata and contacts appear to have played a part), the unwritten Latin language from which Romanian developed may have already undergone certain types of simplifications. Similar things appear to have happened in the case of Romance languages elsewhere, though in those cases substrata and influences came from other sources, such as Celtic, Iberian and Vasconic.<br>
<br>Regards,<br>Reinhard/Ron<br>Seattle, USA</font></span></p></div>
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