LL-L "Morphology" 2003.10.02 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Alfred Brothers <alfredb at erols.com>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2003.10.01 (01) [E]

Luc Hellinckx wrote:

>First please consider that in medieval Brabantish the third person singular
>(both accusative and genitive) was often _en_ (~ihn (G)?) in an enclitic
>position, e.g. "Men neempten gevangen..." ("Men neemt hem gevangen..."
(D)).
>Today we will still say:
>
>"Pakt en vast!" ("Pakt hem vast!" (D))
>"Eit en da ni gezeid?" ("Heeft hij dat niet gezegd?" (D))
>"En eit da ni gezeid." ("Hij heeft dat niet gezegd." (D))
>
>which shows both proclitic and enclitic usage (no longer restricted to the
>acccusative and genitive case but also in the nominative case).
>

Speaking only from general knowledge with nothing to back me up but an
educated (?) guess, I don't feel that this is entirely in the same
category as the _wir > mir_ shift. This sounds more like a process of
case leveling, where two or more grammatical cases merge into one. -- A
process found in many modern languages.

Compare the following:

AFRIKAANS:  _ons_, originally accusative and dative, now also
nominative, eliminating _wij, we, *wy_, or whatever it might have been

ENGLISH:  _you_, originally accusative and dative, now also nom.,
eliminating _ye_ in most dialects

(ENGLISH/SCOTS:  _ye_, originally nominative, now also accusative and
dative, eliminating or augmenting _you_ in some dialects)

ENGLISH:  _who_, originally nom., now also accusative and dative (in the
colloquial language), replacing _whom_

CONTINENTAL SCANDINAVIAN:  (h)vem, accusative in an older stage of the
language (originally a dative which had replaced the earlier
accusative), now also nom., eliminating *(h)ver -- the opposite of English

...and there are many more.

In the examples you give, however, there is one thing both phenomena
have in common -- you show how the enclitic form of the pronoun has
moved to a proclitic position while retaining its enclitic form. This
may well have played a role in the _wir > mir_ shift, though I think it
may have been a combination of things.

>The only difference is that "me" shifted from singular to plural (both
first
>person). So maybe this plural "me" is the same as the singular personal
>pronoun "me, mij". Comparing the situation with South German dialects might
>(dis)prove this argument. Has the Bavarian "miâ" for example ever meant
"me"
>(E)?
>

This is where, in my opinion, the similarity ends. Yes, _mir_ (_miâ, mâ,
etc.) *still* means "(to/for) me" (in the dative case) in just about all
Upper German dialects (including Swiss and Austrian German) -- and
standard High German, for that matter. And in all the areas where _mir_
is used for both _wir_ (we) and _mir_ (me), the pronunciation is
identical, both stressed and untressed forms. (In fact, _man_ (one) is
often pronounced the same way and can be distinguished from unstressed
_mir_ (we) only by the form of the following verb.) But there is never
any confusion as to which is meant and there really isn't any "feeling"
of a singular being used for a plural or vice versa. (See below on _me_
vs. _us, iz_.)

Ron/Reinhard wrote:

>In many Lowlands Saxon (Low German) dialects, especially in those of the
>North Saxon group and of the Mecklenburg region, this _-t_ is applied to
all
>plural cases:
>
>Wy speelt
>Jy speelt
>Sey speelt
>
>Other dialects have _-en_:
>
>Wy spelen
>Jy spelen
>Sey spelen
>
Are there *any* Lowlands Saxon (Low German) variants that use a
combination of forms in the plural, i.e., _-en_ for the 1st and 3rd
person and _-t_ for the 2nd? Or are all dialects one or the other? I've
always wondered about that.

Andy Eagle wrote:

>A can't see 'iz' being an unemphatic form of me (unless you simply mean it
>functions as such). Surely its a form of 'us' that has taken on some of the
>semantics of 'me' as a non-emphatic substitute for it.
>
I agree with this wholeheartedly. It might be of interest to some that
this use of _us, iz_ is not unknown in America, at least not in New
England. While growing up there, I often heard expressions like "can you
give us a hand with this?" or "give us a kiss." I'm not sure how
wide-spread the use is outside of that area, and I should point out that
there was a fairly large number of English and Irish immigrants in the
area. The expressions were not limited to those speakers, however.

Regards,
Al Brothers

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