Yiddish

[Loren A. Billings]

John Dunn wrote:
>
> [...] I don't see anything necessarily implausible
> about the syntax of a language being extensively
> reconfigured under the influence of other languages
> with which it is in contact.

Good point. That got me thinking about some of the
better documented cases of a linguistic area (or
_Sprachbund_) in the literature. Of the six areas
discussed by Campbell (1998:300-06), it seems to be
common for basic word order or other traits which
are strictly syntactic to be shared by the members
of an area. I'll repeat only two areas here:

1. Mesoamerica: Ten language families and isolates
are represented. "Non-verb-final basic word order (no
SOV languages)--although Mesoamerica is surrounded by
languages both to the north and south which have SOV
(Subject-Object-Verb) word order, all languages
within the linguistic area have VOS, VSO or SOV [sic.]
basic order."

2. The Balkans (just to keep the chit chat relevant
to SEELangs): infinitives replaced by complementizer
(-like) structures, as in Bulgarian _daj mi da pija_
give.IMPERATIVE.SG me.DATIVE that drink.1SG 'give me
something to drink' (also in Romanian, Tosk Albanian
and Greek).

(I can vouch for the Balkan infinitive, having also
consulted Joseph 1983 previously. Also, Campbell is
a noted authority on Mesoamerican languages.)

Thus, I agree that syntax seems to be quite easily
borrowed, at least in the areas of close contact
between languages--apparently the case with German
and Yiddish.

> Old Church Slavonic reproduces many of the features
> of Greek syntax,

Well, this case may be due to the influences of the
original language on the translators. If my memory
serves, OCS consisted nearly entirely of Christian
scripture (New Testament), originally from the Greek.

> and during the 18th century the various influences
> of Latin, Polish, German and French led to major
> changes in the syntax of written Russian; indeed
> many of the features which distinguish the syntax
> of the present-day written Russian from its spoken
> equivalent can, in my view, be attributed to the
> remains of these influences.

Interesting idea. I'd like to see how intonation is
accounted for. My impression is that written CSR
allows non-SVO orders in very specific discourse
environments, whereas in the spoken language it is
possible to highlight a particular constituent of
the sentence without actually moving it relative to
the rest of the structure. That is, the spoken
language has the options of written Russian plus
some others that would be hard to render in print
(without, say, unconventional emphasis marked).

> It is true, however, that these are written
> languages, and a more pertinent comparison would,
> I suppose, be with those Slavonic languages where
> the spoken form has been influenced by German,
> presumably Sorbian and perhaps Czech or Slovene.

Toman (1996) has discussed how, in the colloquial
registers, it is possible to drop topic nominals
and still keep the verb and clitic (cluster) in
second position in German and Czech (respectively):

German: (das) kenne     ich
         that know.1Sg  I.Nom
        'I know it.'

        (das) muss     man wissen
         that must.3Sg one know.Infin
        'One must know it.'

Czech:  (to) bych      netvrdil
         it  would.1Sg know.1Sg
        'I wouldn't claim it.'

        (to) se        uvid'i
         it  Reflexive will-see.3Sg
        'One will see.'

The point is that the initial nominal can be dropped
and the verb/clitic is phonetically initial in
the utterance. This, as well as the strictly phrasal
interpretation of second-position (i.e., with the
clitic cluster following a first constituent that is
unambiguously a syntactic phrase) in Czech shows
that this topic-dropping is syntactic. In addition,
a number of sources, summarized in Bo^skovi'c
2001:153-54, have pointed out the same for Slovene;
this language has also had extensive contact with
German. (I) can't speak for Sorbian in this respect.
And the German verb also clearly appears in a
syntactic second position, following a strictly
phrasal interpretation of the so-called _Vorfeld_;
this strongly suggests some sort of borrowing from
German to Czech (and perhaps Slovene).

> I don't know enough about either language to
> pre-judge the answer, but I would have thought
> that if the syntax of spoken Sorbian were found
> to be significantly less 'German' than that of
> Yiddish, that would be a question which needed
> to be addressed.  [...]

Another good point. I wish I could address it.

My quibbles aside, it looks clear that syntactic
traits are relatively borrowable. Thus, these are
not inconsistent with Wexler's claim. Not having
read either of his recent books (or any of his
articles), he may well have discussed syntactic
phenomena in his own work. (You there, Paul?)

--Loren


WORKS CITED:

BO^SKOVI'C, ^Zeljko (2001) _On the nature of the
     syntax-phonology interface: cliticization
     and other phenomena_ Amsterdam: Elsevier.

CAMPBELL, Lyle (1998) _Historical linguistics, an
     introduction_ Edinburgh University Press.
     [MIT Press reproduced it in 1999, perhaps
     without the typo noted above.]

JOSEPH, Brian D. (1983) _The synchrony and
     diachrony of the Balkan infinitive_ Cambridge
     University Press.

TOMAN, Jind^rich (1996) "A note on clitics and
     prosody." A.L. Halpern & A.M. Zwicky, eds.
     _Approaching second: second position clitics
     and related phenomena_ Stanford, CA: CSLI.



--
Loren A. Billings, Ph.D.
Associate professor of linguistics
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Chi Nan University
Puli, Nantou, Taiwan 545 Republic of China

E-mail: billings at ncnu.edu.tw

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                  http://home.attbi.com/~lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------