biloxi update

David Kaufman dvklinguist2003 at yahoo.com
Wed Oct 13 18:06:03 UTC 2004


--Rom.: "vreau sã cânt"-- exactly like Mod Greek <thélo na tragoudó> "I want I sing" = I want to sing.

The only other similarity and possible influence I can think of off-hand is that both Bulgarian and Rumanian have post-posed definite articles, e.g. Bulg. cveteto (-to) and Rum. calul (-ul), although this trait isn't shared by Greek; I don't know about other Balkan languages.  This is of course the opposite of other Mod Latin languages which have the article before the noun.

This discussion of infinitives or lack thereof leads me to a Siouan question: I know in Cherokee, from what I know so far, there is an actual infinitive form of the verb.  But it seems to me that Hidatsa does not have an infinitive form, and I believe that the third person "unmarked" form of the verb is considered the "neutral" or dictionary form.  (John B., please correct if I'm wrong.)  Do other Siouan languages have infinitives, or do they simply have the "unmarked" form of verbs like Hidatsa?

Dave

"Alfred W. Tüting" <ti at fa-kuan.muc.de> wrote:
> (Dave) Sorry! I actually meant Balkan influence! I'm not an expert on
Rumanian, but what I've studied I know that there are Greek-Balkan
influences in the grammar. Such as the lack of a "true" infinitive form
as still exists in other Latin languages, a trait shared by Modern Greek. <<


Sorry too for my being dim-witted :(
Yes, this shared (syntactical) feature seems to be the base for speaking
of "Balkan-type" languages (such as Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian,
Serbo-Croatian - sorry for making them one language ;) -, Albanian, but
not Hungarian!), e.g. Rom.: "vreau sã cânt" vs. e.g. Ital.: "vorrei
cantare"). Yet, are there still others?? (Sorry for this OT)


Alfred





		
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