LL-L "Syntax" 2004.09.04 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Jo Thys <Jo.Thijs1 at pandora.be>
Subject: grammar


Hei ljeglenner,

I come from Limburg and am puzzled by a grammatical phenomenon that i did'nt
notice till i came across a sentence in the archive:

"Did yun have a good Christmas, N" (from Bill Wigham)

Inverting it - as we dutchspeakers usually have to do- it produced something
like:

"yu 'n did have a good Christmas, N" (?),

which in my mind turned the cordial Mrs. Hartland at once in some sort of
witch, which of course she wasn't.
The reason that this happened is, i believe, a grammatical construction in
Limburgish. I hear it very seldom but when i do, it's pronounced loud and
clear. My father is a very cordial man, but when he gets really angry (i'm
less cordial) he inserts a clear, stressed en ( the e like in Eng.
pen),between subject and verb. For example

jij gaat naar de kerk ( you go to the church)
jij en gaat naar de kerk

jij gaat niet naar de fuif (you don't go to the party)
jij en gaat niet naar de fuif

ik ga naar huis (i go home)
ik en ga naar huis

Mostly the latter construction is used to end a discussion (ik ga niet-jij
gaat wel-nee, ik ga niet- jij en gaat!) and it works very wel. Since i only
hear it in quite tensed situations, i turned Mrs. Hartland in an agressor,
while nothing in the context would favour such a thought. I was mislead by
an artefact, if yu-n and jij-en were cognate at all. It was probably not
only used in escalating discussions, but my father simply turned to an older
version of his language when he got really angry.

What the Limburgish and Appalachan(?) example then have in common is that in
both examples the answer can't be no, and kids in Virgiana are undoubtfully
learnt to answer yes on questions like the Christmas one, just like here.
The same sound, en, appears in two other grammatical constructions, that can
get no no as answer:

i ain't do that (yes, you will)
strong winds today, isn't/ain't it? (yes it is)

In the closest dutch spelling this would render

ai eind doe det
strong winds toedei, is ent het

Therefore, i'm stuk with some questions:
- is ain't a contraction of  am not ? It seems semanticly misused
(e.g.http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/drlang003.html)
- isn't is clearly a contraction of is not, but is it modeled after an older
form? No other lllanguage seems to use it as often, isn't it?
- What does the en(d) in "jij en(d) doet dat niet" means, and has this
phenomenon a name?
-Where does it come from?
-Are there any other lowland dialects where "en" is used as pronominal
suffix, as interject, in rhetorical questions?
-Are there any dialects in which the use of the en(d) sound correlates
somehow with the social status of the speaker?

More curious than ever, en met vriendelijke groeten,

Jo Thys, Mewa

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From: R. F. Hahn <lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net>
Subject: Syntax

Hello, Jo!

Welcome to the List!

Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Founder & Administrator, Lowlands
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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