LL-L "Morphology" 2004.08.23 (02) [E]

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2004.08.22 (07) [E]

Andrys wrote:
> I think it's become far more prevalent than that - it seems everyone who
> wishes to self-aggrandise uses the third person to refer to themselves.
> (You wonder where you've missed the turn-off when Britney Spears tells
> us what "Britney Spears" thinks - although this is only what Andrys
> Onsman thinks!).

Let's not forget Bob Dole - when he ran for president, he practically always
referred to himself as "Bob Dole"... he probably had one of those mothers
who would still say "Mommy wants you to become president" by the time he
actually tried to...

I often wonder how people come to think that talking like that will make
learning to speak any easier for their children... the concept of "I" vs.
"you" is easy to learn, even for one-year-olds.

Gabriele Kahn

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.22 (06) [E]

Dear John Feather,

Subject: Language varieties

> You can read a facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays
(printed
> 1623) on the internet.  Line 1110 at the end of Act 2 of J Caesar is "What
> is't a Clocke?" (Same at Line 1171). This is presumably the "a" we find in
> "asleep", etc, and not the same thing as the "o'" in "o'clock" if this is
> derived from "of the clock".

Well, no. Not presumably,  but definitely the _a-_ we find in 'asleep',
'ajar, abate, & for that matter 'allow' & all the rest goes back to the Old
English, with the prefix _ge-_, & as with other cases where it preceded a
high front vowel, drifted to _y-_, or the glottal stop _'-_, and so into the
void, leaving the prefix _a_, without a hyphen. This matters.
Now nobody would accuse Wm. Sakespaw of being orthographically consistant,
even with his own signature, but to be strictly fair, this was not a
'requirement' of English in common usage, until about the publication of
Johnson's Dictionary.
But "o'clock" is a phrase, as shown by the apostrophe, a contraction of "of
the clock".
It was pronounced 'presumably' with a schwa, & certainly it was of no great
moment to the reader, or for that matter the writer or publisher, of that
folio, which of the vowels commonly representing schwa were used, or that a
space sufficed for an apostrophe: The sense is plain, is it not?
However, we do not have that perspective today. All subsequent publications
of Shikspar have been edited for orthographic consistancy, Of those I
possess; let me include 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare' of the Hamlin
Publishing Group', in which the same line reads "o'clock". Mine & those
annotated editions I studied, & we did them ad nauseum at school, were all
edited to the same orthographic standard.
I suspect a lot has been lost thereby. Be that as it may, the Editors of
Shakespeer are in agreement that the 'actual' phrase is "o'clock"; I don't
know why. Perhaps we should consult them?

But it seems a bit odd for the etymologists to
> trace "o'clock" only back to 1647 on this basis. I bet lots of people kept
> on saying "a clocke" long after 1647 or even 1720: I suspect I still do,
> phonetically, but in addition "a-" still persists in common use in Eng
> dialects, I think, not to mention Westerns: "I'm a-going".

Bear in mind the _ge-_ (OE) & _a-_ (ME) modify a verb, as their cognates on
the Continent & in Afrikaans still do. All the examples you & I quoted are
verbs. 'Clock' is a noun.

Are you sure you're not an agent provokateur of Reinhard? Bliksem, you're
making me think!

Yrs Sincerely,
Mark

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Morphology

Mark:

> Are you sure you're not an agent provokateur of Reinhard? Bliksem, you're
> making me think!

I try to be all things to all people, Mark, according to their (growing)
needs -- today a provocateur to you and a _Literaturbanause_ to Gabriele,
whatever makes one's current boat float, and as long as those gray cells
keep on churning away.  But this mustn't be misconstrued as bieng
flame-baiting.

D.M.Pennington (under "Language varieties"):

> On arriving home with my Russian wife in 1997, a former workmate of mine
> said to me: "Nay!  Th'art a fawse un! Tha ne'er towd us that tha'dst
getten
> wed."
>
> (Now! Thou art a false one!  Thou never told us that thou hadst got wed.")
>
> On hearing this and my further discourse with my erstwhile colleagues, my
> wife asked why we were talking German!
>
> Aw reet! Dos't get wor ahm on abayht?
>
> (All right! Dost thou get what I am on about?)

Are you telling us that second person singular and plural are
morphologically still separate in your dialect?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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