Yiddish

[MARTIN VOTRUBA]

> (i)  Se    mi  vcera         narodil  kluk,  tak  jsme         trochu
> oslavili!
>      refl. me  yesterday  born      boy,   so   aux.-1pl.  little
> celebrated
>     "I had a boy yesterday, so we celebrated a little"

> (ii)  a.  Se  mi  zda,  ze  si  koledujes.
>           refl.  me  seems  that  refl.  asking-for-it-2sg.
>           "Seems to me that you're asking for trouble"


I've generally felt that such sentences drop an introductory _tak_ ("so")
"for extra colloquial effect."  But it's less obvious in others.

E.g., in the Slovak:

(A)     Sa robis.
        refl.  you-are-doing
        "You're showing off."

(B)     Si prisiel neskoro, co?
        you-be-past-aux  came  late  what
        "You came late, right?"

_Ty_ ("you") or _len_ ("only") could be supplied in (A), but that doesn't
"feel"  as relatively obvious to me as _tak_ in (i) and (iia), and what's
missing is even more obscure in (B).  But all such sentences certainly
"feel" like something is missing at the beginning, which contributes to
their colloquial or "immediate," quasi-contextualized effect, as if the
speaker were beginning in medias res.


Martin

votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu

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