LL-L "Grammar" 2003.03.03 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

Sorry.  This went out under the wrong subject line. RFH
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From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2003.03.02 (01) [E]

At 11:15 AM 03/02/03 -0800, Sandy wrote:
>So, was Shakespeare Canadian, or what?  :\

There is the theory that North American speech patterns have changed less
than those in Britain since Elizabethan times, and hence Canadian, which is
very close to General American, may indeed be much more familiar to the
Bard, were he to be able to hear us.

Sandy, I must thank you for being the one person who finally understood
what I was trying to ask.  Since it would appear that the use of the
objective/accusative form of pronoun in the subjective/nominative position
is unique to Lowlands languages of the British Isles, my assumption would
be that this is a later development, and not the reverse.  Upon this
theory, those who use the older form have not had their speech "engineered"
or "Latinized", but are preserving something from the past against a new
development.  Frankly, I was not aware that this form had so completely
supplanted the former, especially in Scotland and Ireland.  If this is
indeed the case, then one should not be surprised at the formalization of
"rules" to govern this practice, which is now apparently quite normative in
that area.  However, I can assure you that it is still considered an
aberration here, and as such does not warrant any rules which would only
enhance its raison d'etre.  In fact, my suspicion would be that this use
would rather be on the decline here in Ontario, and probably the rest of
North America.

Ed Alexander

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From: Alannah Stepa <astepa at shaw.ca>
Subject:  LL-L "Grammar" 2003.03.01 (08) [E]

>From Alannah astepa at shaw.ca

Ed,

I have read a couple of your previous postings and my thoughts  and I am
assuming that you are a Canadian, not an immigrent. Canada is a very
"classless" society when compared to more established cultures. It seem to
me that many English people I encounter have moved here because it is a way
to escape a system that they do not belong in. They are middle class by
education from working class backgrounds and they bring a good education and
a more formal usage of the language with them.
Add to this the large number of Europeans who moved here during the past
millinium, "Canadian" has become a mixture of the languages which in some
languges do not translate "my wife and I" "my wife and myself" or "me and my
wife" in the same way. Thus the use of the different sentence structures is
not a matter of "correct" but more of how the native language was translated
into English and used at home.
I think you would agree with me, hey?

Alannah astepa at shaw.ca

----------

From: burgdal32admin <burgdal32 at pandora.be>
Subject:  LL-L "Grammar" 2003.02.28 (03) [E]

> From: Allison Turner-hansen <athansen at arches.uga.edu>
> Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2003.02.27 (07) [E]
>
> Ron wrote:
>> The "you" in "Sit you down, dear companions" may not be reflexive or
>> otherwise objective but rather subjective. In other words, this could
>> well
>> be a remnant of an archaic imperative construction.
>> Construction: [verb imp.] [pron. subj.] ...
>
>> So, in "Sit you down, dear companions" the "you" may well be of this
>> sort.
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Reinhard/Ron
>>
> Ron,
> Yes, your examples, including "Go thou" and "Go you", show clearly
> that the pronoun is the subject of the verb.  It makes sense in the
> case
> of "Sit you down", too.
> Allison
>
Sit you down
V: Zet je nere/ Zet u nere/ Zet  joe nere.
And we have "zetten" and "zitten".

Groetjes
Luc Vanbrabant
Oekene

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