LL-L: "Grammar" LOWLANDS-L, 14.JAN.2001 (04) [E]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 14.JAN.2001 (41) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Grammar

I wrote:
>In English the apostrophe came about because some grammarians in the
16th/17th centuries assumed that the genitive "s" was a relic of "his", so
that "Bob Green his hat" had reduced to "Bob Greens hat", and inserted the
apostrophe to indicate the supposedly missing letters. <

I have since skimmed through a collection of Caxton's prose and found that
(in the late 15th century) he was using both the "s" and "his" forms: "in
my
lordes name" and "my author his prologe" (referring to the author of the
work which he has translated). I am still inclined to think that the use of

the apostrophe as a regular mark of the genitive came quite a lot later.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Grammar

Ian James Parsley wrote:

>In Belfast (and some urban areas in Scotland, I believe), the tendency is
to say 'See my brother? His car...<

This seems to be similar to the London usage "You know my brother?", which
is not in fact a question but usually an indication that the speaker is
introducing a new topic. Is this type of locution found in other varieties
of English and other Lowlandic languages?

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeeserve.co.uk

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: "Grammar"

> From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
> Subject: "Grammar" (was "Morphology")
>
> What other examples in Lowland languages can people think of,
> where you can see how an ambiguous construction/pronunciation
> has led a later generation to reinterpret the grammar?  There
> should be plenty of examples.

I think I've come across some but I can't think of them right
now! I wonder, though, if these become rarer the more people
become literate? For example...

I think that when I was a young child made several parsing
errors in my Scots which sorted themselves out as my
familiarity with the language grew. I can't remember any
of them, except for a particularly persistent one, which
was "... as tunkin tell". I used this expression for years
until I was reading a novel at the age of 15 and came across
the expression "... as tongue can tell," and realised that
"tunkin" wasn't a word. Perhaps this might suggest that written
languages are less prone to propagating this sort of error to
later generations?

Errors like this are well guarded against by the educational
system if the language has one, because people are taught to
write "should have" even when they say "shoulda", and so on,
and in formal writing as opposed to creative writing an editor
simply wouldn't allow forms like "shoulda". That goes for
English, but in traditional Scots writing I find that parsing
errors are rare. When they do occur they seem to be due to the
writer attempting to write what he has heard of an unfamiliar
dialect. For example, when I submitted some Scots games in a
recent email I remarked that the book had various parsing
errors (eg "jimpin' sma' should be "jimp an' sma'" - "jimp"
can be a verb but a Scots speaker ought to know that it isn't
being used this way here), and these parsing errors are
consistent with the fact that the writer seems to be writing
down what she is hearing rather than really knowing the
language.

A particularly notorious example occurs several times in the
work of Sir James Barrie (Gavin Ogilvy, creator of Peter Pan).
Barrie was from Dumfriesshire but his written Scots is
actually an attempt to record the speech of the people of
Angus, where he lived as an adult. This results in him writing
the mystifying "Scots" word "sepad":

"I sepad he's mair ashamed o't in his hert than she is."

This has puzzled many Scots speakers, but if you actually speak
a similar dialect (which Barrie didn't), you may find it
transparent:

"I'se uphaud he's mair ashamed o't in his hert than she is."

I think this makes a very good case for teaching children
traditional Scots orthography rather than just telling them
to write as they speak!

Sandy

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: "Grammar"

> From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Grammar
>
> Barbara's remark about the loss of a vocative case is interesting.  It is

> true that Germanic varieties do not have a vocative.  (Or are there any?)

> In Slavic and Semitic, some varieties do and some do not have a vocative
> case, or a language may have a vocative case only in certain genders or
> forms.  Can we be so sure that a vocative case is ancient and has
> been lost here and there?  Or could it be that some language varieties
> developed a vocative independently?

Again, I think it's only the vocative morphological markers
that are missing from Germanic languages. There is still a
syntactic vocative, eg "Mary, could you please stop that?"
To my mind, "Mary" is in the vocative case here, if we do
want to interpret English nouns in terms of a case system.

Within IE languages, Welsh does have a morphological vocative,
although it is disappearing, I believe. It does seem to have
developed independently, however, because it's represented as
a soft mutation at the beginning of the word, eg the vocative
of "Dai" [da:i] is "Ddai" [Da:i]. This too suggests, as in
the Arabic case, that it has developed from a word meaning
something like "O!" or "Hey!" before the vocative, as
mutations in Welsh do arise from the influence of the
previous word. The process can be more definitely followed
for the possessive pronoun "fy" ("my"):

tad [ta:d] (father)

'y nhad [V nha:d] (my father)

...then dropping the "fy" because the nasal mutation already indicates
it...

nhad (my father)

Sandy

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Grammar

I wrote:

> Turkish languages

That was supposed to be "Turkic languages".  "Turkish" is a language;
"Turkic" is a group of languages or a type of language.

Further to Sandy's question if "my" rule ("The less morphological marking
the more syntactic marking") applies universally:

To illustrate, here a Turkic example from Uyghur (used in Western China and
in Kazakhstan):

1=subj., 2=indir.obj. (+gha~gä~qa~kä), 3=def.dir.obj. (+ni),* 4=verb
(A definite direct object is marked by +ni; an indefinite one is marked by
zero.)

Män anamgha xätni yazdim.
[män [1] ana+m+gha [2] xät+ni [3] yaz+dim [4]]
(I [1] my-mother-DAT. [2] letter-ACC. [3] write-PAST/1st.SG.)
I wrote the letter to my mother.
I wrote the letter for my mother.

Alternative constructions:
Anamgha xätni yazdim.
(Män) xätni yazdim anamgha.
(Män) xätni anamgha yazdim.
(Män) anamgha xätni yazdim.
Yazdim xätni anamgha.
Anamgha xätni yazdim män.
Xätni anamgha yazdim män.

Unless they are used poetically, they convey by way of position different
emphases, topicalization and tagging; so syntactic structure fulfills a
different function, not case marking:

(Män) xätni yazdim anamgha.
I *did* write the letter, the one to my mother.

(Män) xätni anamgha yazdim.
As for the letter, I wrote it to my mother.

(Män) anamgha xätni yazdim.
I did write the letter to my mother (not to the others).

Yazdim xätni anamgha.
I did write it, the letter to my mother.

Anamgha xätni yazdim män.
I wrote the letter to my mother; I sure did.

Xätni anamgha yazdim män.
The letter? I wrote it to my mother; I sure did.

In contrast, the Chinese languages are similar to English in that they have
no morphological dative and accusative marking and thus rely on rigid
syntactic structure for case marking.  In fact, inherently there is neither
subject marking nor object marking.  For example, in Mandarin:

Xiao Zhang ai Xiao Luo.
(Little Zhang love Little Luo)
Little Zhang loves/loved Little Luo.

Xiao Luo ai Xiao Zhang.
(Little Luo love Little Zhang)
Little Luo loves/loved Little Zhang.

Here the syntactic structure is all-important.

However, a type of dative marking can be used by way of verbs, e.g., 'to
give':

Wo gei wo muqin xie xin.
(I give I mother write letter)
I write a letter to/for my mother.

Or a type of accusative marking by means of the verb 'to grasp', 'to take':

Wo ba xin song gei wo muqin.
(I take letter send give I mother)
I send/sent my mother the letter.
I send/sent the letter off to my mother.

In these "marked" cases, there seems to be some syntactic flexibility (Wo
xie xin gei wo muqin???), but apparently rarely so (and not in the last
example).

Sandy wrote:

> Again, I think it's only the vocative morphological markers
> that are missing from Germanic languages. There is still a
> syntactic vocative, eg "Mary, could you please stop that?"
> To my mind, "Mary" is in the vocative case here, if we do
> want to interpret English nouns in terms of a case system.

And I would be surprised if anyone could refute this.  Again, it is
syntactic rather than morphologically marking.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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