LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.13 (03) [E]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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   L O W L A N D S - L * 13 November 2005 * Volume 03
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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.11 (04) [E]

Dear Henry,

you wrote:
> In English there are diminutives, only not as much as in other
> languages. For example: sonny, lassie, doggy, kitty, movies, undies,
> etc. Also, English uses -ette, from French. For more, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutive
>
Of course, you're absolutely right.
And- it's going the same way in our LS: _Hundi_, _Miezi_, _Peerdi_= little
dog/cat/horse; _Manni_, _Fidi_, _Jonni[y]_, _Mary_(spoken like in English;
could be a loan)= little 'ones'.

Very interesting in special is LS: _Kischi_ for 'little calf' [and, but this
is a different thing, _Hietscher*_ for 'little foal'].

Obviously this kind of diminution mostly is used for men and animals; there
are not many other objects you could transfer into diminutive form without
coming closely to baby-language.

(*: I'm not sure in 'Hietscher' [hitS6) to be of LS-origin; it could be a
very special, internal creation of my family, possibly influenced by Easterm
Prussia Low Saxon.)

Greut*jes*

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.12 (04) [E]

I think that Germanic, as a branch of Indo-European, is no different from
Romance, Slavonic or Celtic in having diminutives. Gothic, the oldest
and "purest" of the known Germanic languages, also had diminution.
Attila and Wulfila, the two most famous Gothic names, are both
diminutives.
So why would the fact that Central Low Saxon and Scandinavian does not
make use of it a lot have to be explained through influence from other
languages? Maybe they lost it, for some reason, as they lost other
features as well. Modern Scandinavian languages for instance lost the
subdivision of the verbs in different persons, there is only one form,
even with e.g. Danish to be: jeg er, du er, han er, vi er, I er, de er.
Should we conclude from this that the fact that German has six different
forms here, "ich bin, du bist, er ist, wir sind, ihr seid, sie sind"
is Romance or Slavonic influence?

Maybe it has something to do with "national character" though.
I know for instance that Brasilian Portuguese and several Latin Americ
Spanish varieties tend to use diminution considerably more than their
European counterparts, but this doesn't say one should suspect immediate
Amerindian or Afro-American linguistic influence, that probably would not
have these results, but an internal development that strengthens itself.

Groetjes
Ingmar

Reynken schreev:
>I am wondering if in this regard we may talk about "arial features,"
namely
>features that are present or absent within a *geographical* region
>irrespective of linguistic genealogy.  Given the relative scarsity of
>diminutive use in Scandinavian and Central Low Saxon (i.e., varieties used
>outside the spheres of direct Franconian and Slavonic influence), in
>combination with what we know about Germanic migration/spread, I might go
as
>far as to speculate that Germanic originally came with little of no
>diminution and at its farthest reaches acquire this feature or underwent
>increased application of it as a result of language contacts--in the east
>contacts with Slavonic and Baltic, and in the west and south contacts with
>Romance (_Welsch_), especially in Franconian (northwest), Alemannic
>(southwest) and Bayuvarian (south) which have some roots in both Celtic
and
>Romance. 

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