LL-L: "Grammar" LOWLANDS-L, 20.JAN.2001 (01) [E]
Lowlands-L
sassisch at yahoo.com
Sun Jan 21 00:33:41 UTC 2001
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L O W L A N D S - L * 20.JAN.2001 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans, Ap=Appalachean, D=Dutch, E=English, F=Frisian, L=Limburgish
LS=Low Saxon (Low German), S=Scots, Sh=Shetlandic, Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: gavilan [Gavilan at nbnet.nb.ca]
Subject: LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, (dill)
>I would be interested in other people's thoughts.
>
Maybe one reason people will accept 'dilled' is that many say 'dilled
pickles' instead of 'dill pickles'. Well...it's a thought!
-+- Bob Thiel -+-
gavilan at nbnet.nb.ca
Translator: Spanish to English
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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Grammar
Bob,
Thanks for the pointer. I have never heard "dilled pickles" used, and
neither have people I have asked since: five local (Seattle) native
speakers, two Californians, and one Irish woman who has lived in England
and New York before moving here. This is not to say that I doubt that it
is used in your neck of the woods. It certainly would explain "dilled
salad."
Here is another question:
If "dilled" is acceptable, are "to dill", "dilling" and "she dills" (or "As
promised, she did dill the entire batch of cucumbers. She was quietly
dilling away in the kitchen while the others watched the inaugural
telecast") acceptable as well, or does such a part-participle-derived
adjective skip the actual use of verbal forms that would normally precede
it?
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: Grammar
Ron queried:
> Also, it would be interesting to find out what sorts of
> restrictions and boundaries there are in noun > verb
> derivation in English (and Afrikaans?).
> Surely you cannot say things like "You have over-cumined the
> chili," "I prefer my pizza marjoramed rather than oreganoed,"
> or "Try oiling and (sage >) saging
> potatoes before you roast them."
I actually say things like that, but I wouldn't say or write
them in formal contexts (in private letters, yes). The verb in
something like "Bob really onioned the bejeeberes out of that
sauce" (= he put a very large amount in) is obviously ad-hoc,
and not necessary for communicating information. But it does
lend a more relaxed and humorous tone.
Changing what part of speech a word is differs from inventing
brand-new technical or philosophical etc. terms for new objects
or concepts: you could use a phrase to say the same thing as a
re-grammaticalized word ("That is in style" vs. "That is in").
Changing a preposition to an adjective etc. tends to be less
about introducing a new concept and is more a way of adding
stylitic variety (most of these changed-class words start off as
informal variants). I'm of two minds to say whether changing
morphological classes comes more from stylistic variation or
simple ease of shortening ("in" vs. "in style", "to out" vs. "to
flush out into the open").
When we think about what limits English has on changing
morphological classes of English words, context is going to play
a big initial role, I think. Once a word has caught on
informally, it can then spread into mainstream use, e.g. "That
music is in" (preposition turned adjective), "They outed the
senator" (preposition turned verb), "Tex wowed'm with my
yee-hawing" (interjection turned verb, interjection turned
verbal noun).
So: main factors that occur to me are: (initially) informal
context, stylistic considerations, ease of shortening.
Stefan
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Grammar
Ron wrote:
>Surely you cannot say things like "You have over-cumined the chili," "I
prefer my pizza marjoramed rather than oreganoed," or "Try oiling and
(sage ) saging potatoes before you roast them."<
Of course you can say these things, and in the right context the right
people will understand you. If the context is not right or the people are
not receptive to novelty you won't be understood. I can imagine that a
popular TV cook could rapidly create a fashion for such usages. Whether an
English cook would put cumin in chilli I don't know. (NB: Object clause
before verb.)
I really don't think that the shortage of morphology in English is at all
relevant to the ease of formation of new grammatical entitities. Hans
Eggers, in "Deutsche Sprache im 20. Jahrhundert" notes the different forms
which can be derived from the verb "denken" ("think"):
Adj: denkbar, denkend, gedacht
Noun: Denkbarkeit, Denkende, Gedachte, Denken
Eggers points out that current German exhibits a tendency to replace verbs
with nouns ("Nominalstil"), so there isn't a great need to create new verbs
but he cites "testen" and "filmen". He also stresses that most new coinages
will never get into the dictionary.
Eggers makes a comment which is interesting in relationship to the
discussion of morphology vs. syntax. He says that at least 95% of the
individual sentences contained in the database on which his book is based
are not entirely comprehensible when removed from their context. He also
points out that we add to what we read and hear. For example, "The child is
sleeping" stimulates us to create a picture of a sleeping child with which
we then associate a whole range of further ideas. Thus the words are never
everything.
John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Grammar
I wrote and Stefan replied:
>> 1. Case markers in German do not significantly affect the
>> flexibility of word order: there aren't enough of them. For every
singular
>> der/den you have a die/die and a das/das.
>If you actually compare German word order, you'll find it is
>more flexible than English, something my students had to struggle with in
>learning German. German in turn is not as flexible as Latin,
I was not making a general statement about German word order.
There are all sorts of things that could make it more flexible than the
English order.
Frederick Stopp in "A Manual of Modern German", which used to be a standard
university text here, says: "Word order is much less variable in German
than in English."
I can't see why a flexible word-order induces struggle. At what level of
attainment?
>> 2. Most morphology in German has no semantic content and is
>> therefore ..."junk". .. in German the combination def art + adj +
>> plural noun requires the adj to have the ending -en. But
>> since it is the same for all cases and genders it might as
>> well be omitted. Different prepositions take different
>> cases (so syntax+morphology) but when a particular
>> preposition always takes the same case the morphology conveys
>> nothing additional.
>That's not quite so: the adjective ending after the definite
>article is -e in the nominative singular (and accusative
>singular feminine and neuter). That right there makes _der
>gute_ "the good one", (nominative singular masculine) distinct
>from _der guten_ "of/to the good one" (dative or genitive
>singualar feminine) or "of the good ones" (genitive plural).
>Even the adjective ending -e/en carries some information.
I did say "plural noun", and what I said was correct for that.
>Case ending after a preposition that only takes one case still
>contributes some information- we often don't quite hear all
>that a person says, because of background noise, mumbling etc.,
>and if you weren't sure if someone said _von_ or _für_, the
>ending will tell you. Every language has massive redundance so
>that minor inaudibilities won't stop communication.
> Yes, the case ending in this instance plays a very minor
>role, but it does provide some real information; give up the
>morphology, and you have to substitute some other redundant
>backup device.
Not very persuasive, if only because "ihn" and "ihm" are too alike. If
English can get by without different prepositional cases why can't German,
unless German speakers have worse hearing? What redundancy solves this
potential problem in English?
>> 3. I have just been studying time expressions in Classical
>> Greek, which used case without a preposition for different time
>> concepts - time during which, time at which, time for which. .. in
English,
>> although we can use prepositions (and other words) in time expressions
>> we can also use simple phrases like "next week" which can mean more
>> than one thing and still convey our meaning. So did the Greeks really
>>need their cases?
>Every language needs some way to mark grammatical connections
>between parts of a sentence: certainly, they could have stripped
>the endings off, but they'd have had to put something in its place, be
that
a >swarm prepositions etc. or sharply reduced word order.
That simply ignores my point. I can say: "I'll be in New York next week."
It
could mean either that I'll be there for the whole of the week or that I'll
be there during the week. The Greeks distinguished these meanings with case
endings. We don't.
My Austrian is not very good but I think in that version of German it is
possible to say "nächster Wochen" (dat., weak declension of noun) compared
with Binnendeutsch "nächste Woche" (acc.). Since the meaning "next week" is
apparent to a speaker of either version of the language the "grammar" is
redundant. We in fact had a discussion not long ago in which Stefan and
others argued for the extensive mutual intelligibility of different
descendants of Proto-Germanic. That view seems to imply that we do not need
extensive redundancy in order to communicate, rather we have a great
ability
to ignore redundancy.
>If you look at the word order of Old English, you'll see just how
>much the loss of endings has reduced the flexibility of word order,
>e.g. the main verb usually came second, but could come first for purely
>stylistic reasons, or it would optionally come at the end of a
subordinate
>clause,etc
This is a different point. But in any case, is it possible to argue
convincingly that it is changes in morphology which have forced a
restriction on the position of the verb? To take a very simple example, OE
usually (but by no means always) put the verb in second place in a sentence
beginning "Tha" ("then). You find the same thing (and the same exceptions)
in the King James Bible (early 17th century), the morphology of whose
English is almost identical with that of the modern language. Today,
however, we do not use the form *"Then said he ...".
>> 4. Since in Swedish and Norwegian the finite verb has no
>> marker for person or number I am very reluctant to attribute
>> the oddities of the English verb to a degree of simplification
>> which is less extreme than that.
>I'm not quite sure what you are saying- which oddities of the
>English verb? There are many.
I was of course referring to Barbara's analysis.
>I am not sure what you want to say with Swedish either:
>Swedish/Danish/Norwegian resemble English more than German or
>Old English etc. in the restrictions on word order to make up
>for the radical simplication of morphological markers. French
>has some verb endings left, but it has still restricted its
>freedom of word order tremendously in comparison with Latin.
>Shifting the marking between morphology and word order (and
>prepositions and other means of marking) is not either/or; most
>languages have a mix, and that mix will change over time.
I was referring to the Swedish verb. Barbara had argued that the loss of
endings forced or encouraged the particular English word orders which she
described. My point was that Swedish had lost all person and number markers
in the finite verb but had not adopted more complex word orders, hence a
false inference was being made. Surely the point with French is that it is
the loss of case markers which restricts the flexibility of word order, not
any change in the verb endings (which - at least in writing - are generally
different for different persons and numbers). Alfred Ewert says in "The
French Language": "In spite of the many liberties which the two-case system
[in Old French] permitted, the logical order Subject + Verb + Object was
already normal, and in popular speech perhaps general." It therefore
appears
that this aspect of word order became rigid before a need for this rigidity
arose.
A clear problem with a lot of this discussion is quantification. For verbs,
German has more person and number endings than English, which has more than
Swedish. For adjectives, English has fewer forms than Swedish, which has
fewer forms than German. German has multiple cases after prepositions,
English and Swedish have a prepositional case which is the same as the
object case. Etc, etc. Is it possible to measure flexibility and correlate
it with a level of morphology for these three languages?
John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk
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