LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.30 (12) [E]

Thu Dec 1 06:06:23 UTC 2005

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 30 November 2005 * Volume 12
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.30 (08) [A/E]

From: R. F. Hahn
Subject: Language varieties
"Indeed, Bulgarian has a suffixed definite article."
and
"Romanian (which, like Latin, has suffixed definite articles), it is a
preserved ancient feature."

Suffixed definite (and indefinite) articles also turn up in Scandinavian 
languages whereas all other Germanic languages put them at the front.  Is 
this an ancient IE feature that Scandinavian retains while other Germanics 
changed, or did the Scandinavians re-invent it?

I understand that the feature also occurs in the Nahuatl language of Mexico, 
the "tl" on the end of many words being the article.

Paul

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From: Ian Pollock <ispollock at shaw.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.30 (08) [A/E]

> From: Obiter Dictum <obiterdictum at mail.ru>
> Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.29 (04) [A/E]
> Ian, sam ty… generatiwist:).
>
> *This* is the way the East Slavic (NOT Slavonic) languages work. Colon.
> Quote. As a *native* Russian speaker, I'm always aware of the "esm',"
> "esi,", "est'," "esmy," "este," or "sut'" I DROP from my every day
> oral or written speech. Press a Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian
> for truth, and (s)he will admit the same, though most would probably
> do with the 3rd person singular ("est'") for all the persons, singular
> or plural. The verb looms in our consciousness, however unspoken and
> unwritten. But it [be] always there. Unquote.
>
> OK, from the _formal_ point of view, you CAN of course keep asserting
> that once void of external expression, it just doesn’t exist, whether
> you have it in your mind or not--it doesn’t transcribe in IPA
> character, after all.
>
> Jokes apart, Ian: it's, imho, a case of customary ellipsis. The same
> sort of think when you drop whole words offering a drink: "[Will you
> have a] Drink?"
>
> Thanks Ian, [I could do with a] Vodka cappuccino:)
> Incidentally, when I was taught English, one unofficial rule was: The
> absence of [any] article is also an article.
>
>> ….  and that its phonemic form was simple
>> silence. How would the IPA for that work? /   : / ?!
> That brings a Zen koan to my mind.
> A monk asked the disciple, "You clap [your two] hands. The sound is a
> clap. What is the sound if you clap with one hand?"
> The disciple came up with a series wrong answers: gurgle of water,
> whisper of breeze, rustle of foliage (I may be wrong, don't remember
> for sure).
> Then the satori occurred: he realized the sound was silence:)
>
> De-generatively Yours,
> Vlad [Lee]

Dear Vlad,

  Indeed, I wouldn't trust my own intuition on the subject. I asked two
native speakers about this (one of them was the one who brought my
attention to the subject in the first place & a linguist). They both
said that the verbless construction is the normal way of saying things,
that it is unanalyzed at this point, and even implied that use of the
verb "jestj" is somehow primitive-sounding. My mother in law, when
she's tired, still says things in English like "He - engineer," and my
wife tells me that the present tense of "to be" was an incredibly
difficult concept when learning English. But I have long suspected that
people's conceptions of the things they're saying may vary from person
to person in one language. So I don't say your source is wrong. Perhaps
some people (especially the educated?) are consciously aware of the
presence of an unexpressed verb (although I bet the people who know the
jesmj jesi etc. paradigm are few and far between).

Trouble with ellipsis is - it's really hard to tell whether you're
paraphrasing. I myself am not at all sure whether when I say "You want
some tea?" I am consciously omitting "do" or whether it's simply not
there. The point is, I don't think it's good scientific practice to
analyze something that isn't there as though it was. Let me give you an
example that may sway you.

As you may know, another unique characteristic of Slavonic languages is
the past tense. This was originally in the form of a conjugation of "to
be" in present tense plus a participle meaning something roughly like
"the one who verbed". Serbo-Croatian still works this way - "Ja sam
znao" (lit. (I)+(am)+(he-who-knew). In East Slavonic, the part that
means "to be" was dropped, just like in our example above. Now, do you
think that when Russians say, for example, "Pojekhala krysha", they
really say in their heads "krysha jestj pojekhala"? If not, how do you
prove or disprove it?

-Ian Pollock

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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.30 (08) [A/E]

Never heard of the Balkan Sprachbund?
A couple of languages of "totally" unrelated families, i.e. Bulgarian,
Romanian, Modern Greek, Serbian and I think Albanian too, share a number
of grammatical features that languages of their own families don't have.
Of course, all of these languages are found in the same area.
Ingmar

R H:
>All right.  Since it's you, I'm backing you up.  Indeed, Bulgarian has a
>suffixed definite article.  It is by many believed to go back to the old
>Bulgar language.  If they mean by that the Turkic Bolgar language that
>developed into Chuvash farther northeast, I have to disagree, since Turkic
>has no articles -- though it is true that Bulgarian has Turkic substrates
>and influences.  I rather suspect that, if it has not been inspired by
>Romanian (which, like Latin, has suffixed definite articles), it is a
>preserved ancient feature. 

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