LL-L "Grammar" 2005.07.01 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * 01.JUL.2005 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Rules & Guidelines: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org or
lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net Server Manual:
http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html
Archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8) [Please switch your view mode to it.]
=======================================================================
You have received this because you have been subscribed upon request.
To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
text from the same account to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or
sign off at http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================
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)
=======================================================================

From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.06.30 02) [E]

Regarding pre-iron age roots, I gather there are a lot of pre-Indo
European words in Germanic, mainly from a language around the S. Baltic/
souther Scandinavian area that Claibourne and others call "Folkish".  This
language supposedly contributes the non-IE words such a "folk" - where IE
has a cognate of e.g. Latin genus, such as "kin".

Paul

----------

From: burgdal32admin <burgdal32 at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.06.29 (10) [E]

> From: Leslie Decker <leslie at volny.cz>
> Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.06.29 (06) [E]
>
> What about in the Elsschot poem "Het huwelijk?"  There are two lines
> that I
> remember studying in class in Leiden:  "Maar doodslaan deed hij niet"
> and
> "Maar sterven deed zij niet."  The prof pointed out what a strange
> construction that was.  Of course, for the English speakers, it didn't
> even
> faze us!  I wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been pointed out to me.
>  How
> common would something like this be where he was from, or was it all
> just
> poetic license?
>
Hi Leslie,
In my West-Flemish speaking i use it all the time (esp. for the past).
In fact i have the feeling that older people use it more often.
doet de deure up slot (E: close the dore)
Doet de tillevizie uut (E: Shut off the tele ?..)
Zing'n deeme (D: Zingen deden we = We zongen)
Naor uus gaon deenze (D: Naar huis gaan deden ze = Ze gingen naar huis)
Zwemm' deenke (D: Zwemmen deed ik = Ik zwom)
Ze dee nie anders dan screêm' (D: Ze deed niets anders dan wenen =Ze
weende heel de tijd)
Dus ook:
Doôslaon deed ie niet ( D: Doodslaan deed hij niet)
Mao doôgaon dee ze niet (D: Maar sterven deed ze niet)

Vriendelijke groeten
Luc Vanbrabant
Oekene

----------

From: embryomystic at cogeco.ca
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.06.30 02) [E]

Heather wrote:

> Could it be a pre Celtic substrat ?
> There was a school of thought In Wales in the late 19th
> century who analysed the grammar of Welsh and came to the
> the conclusion that it ( and Irish) grammar, in too many
> points for co-incidence,  compared favourably with the
> Berber languages of North Africa including Coptic!
> Among others:
> the use of a 3rd person singular verb for a 3rd person
> plural noun - except when a 3rd person subject pronoun
> was used. the use of the verb to be + infinitive with the
> preposition 'in' to construct the present tense The use
> of the preposition 'after/back' to form the past tense
> There was also evidence of inflected prepositions

I've heard of this. I'm not seeing the correspondences in Irish grammar,
at least in the examples you're giving, aside from 'after' for the recent
past, and, of course, 'inflected prepositions'. Is it possible that you're
misremembering the details? I know that one thing Irish has in common with
Arabic and other Semitic languages is that when there are two nouns in a
noun phrase, one genitive, the other nominative, and both are definite,
you only explicitly mark the second (genitive) one for definiteness. Easy
example: Tír na nÓg, The Land of the Young. Tír is definite, even
though it's not explicitly marked as such. I don't know enough Arabic to
provide an accompanying example there, but I've been told that it's the
same way.

Also, one of the things I don't see is the 3rd person singular verb with a
3rd person plural noun. Then again, that's only because Irish doesn't
inflect for person (in most dialects, the exception being Munster, which I
don't know much about). I don't know about the situation in Old Irish,
though. Perhaps the correspondence is clearer there.

> Their reasoning was that peoples from the eastern
> mediterranean could have sailed through the Straits of
> Gibraltar, along the Spanish coast , across Biscay to
> Brittany and then up St Georges Channel and settled on
> both sides of the water in Ireland and Wales.
> That when the Celts came, they came without females, took
> the indigenous women as wives, who learnt the vocab of
> their husbands but retained in some large measure the
> sentence structure of their own language.

That's possible. There's at least one other ingredient there, though,
shown by the Y-chromosome group that is most common in western Ireland and
the Basquelands. If there had been such a large-scale settling of the
British Isles by Phoenicians or someone, you'd think that their men
would've left a genetic trace.

What I personally think might have happened was a sort of Sprachbund
effect. I know that the Phoenicians traded for tin in Cornwall, and I
wouldn't be terribly surprised if their presence as traders was more
extensive than that. If there was a great deal of cultural contact between
Phoenicians and the ancient Celts, it seems to me that it would only be
required to have been in the southwest of Great Britain, and in some
particularly
influential areas of Ireland, and the changes, on the Brythonic side,
would affect only those Brythonic dialects that gave rise to the Welsh,
Breton, and Cornish languages. On the Goidelic side of things, perhaps the
structural changes would trickle down from the dialects of the influential
areas. If they were culturally dominant even in areas where the
Phoenicians didn't go, then their dialects would influence those of the
other areas.

Just idle speculation, though. No evidence that what I'm referring to is
the actual cause for correspondences between the Insular Celtic and the
Semitic languages.

Isaac M. Davis

================================END===================================
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
  to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at
  http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
======================================================================