LL-L "Grammar" 2005.11.17 (06) [E]

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17 November 2005 * Volume 06
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.11.16 (06) [E]

From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2005.11.16 (03) [E]

"Hey Guys, (Heather, Ron, Jonny) re: speaking the words of one language and
using the syntax of another: Is this a case of not being able to see the
trees for the forest? Just look at English. How much French syntax got
adopted and words too, but everything on an old Germanic base. It may not be
a perfect change-over. But talk to my English speaking students about how
much trouble it causes them!"
Jacqueline

I'm not so sure there *is* that much French syntax in English, despite the 
heavy vocabulary borrowing.

For example the loss of a lot of Low German word order is often said to be 
French, but that can be explained by Norse influence as easily, especi! ally 
as we kept the Germanic adjective-noun order rather than the Romance 
noun-adjective.  Some of the earliest Middle English not long after the 
Conquest, such as the later entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, show the 
change in word order even though they hadn't yet borrowed many French words. 
This suggests that the process was underway before French speakers arrived.

We dropped most case endings, but that has happened throughout the Germanic 
speaking world, except for German and Icelandic, so we can't blame the 
French for that.

Possessives ending in "s" are as likely Norse as French too.  The dominant 
"s" plural does seem to be French though.

Paul

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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.11.17 (04) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>What syntax feature of English is of French origin?<

Another one is the comparative

we can use either the German pattern                        big   bigger
biggest

or the French                   beautiful    more beautiful    most
beautiful

Heather

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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.11.17 (04) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>GOOGLE (Search in Germany only): 9,000 hits for 'indo-europäisch' and
45,000
for 'indo-germanisch'. I think it's not so bad, because many publications
are old ones.
<

Interestingly if you do the same search but in English you get very
differnt results!

Indo-european = 2,160,000 hits

Indo-germanic = 48,600 hits

Heather

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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.11.17 (04) [E]

I think G. indogermanisch or D. Indogermaans originally just were meant
as: the related languages from the Indic to the Germanic linguistic
families, so geographically from India until Northern Europe.
Why would Indo-European be a better description actually? In fact, it's
less precise. We shouldn't be afraid of the term Germanic, especially G.
germanisch, just because of the Nazi abuse of it...
But today, Indo-European is the common linguistic denominator, so let's
just use that, I'll do that at least...
Ingmar

>Paul Tatum:
>Ron also wrote:
>And there you have opened another can of worms, I'm afraid ...  I can
>*not* understand why in German this is still called _Indogermanisch_.  I
>would have hoped that that had bitten the dust along with certain people
>at the end of World War II.  And why is even *Dutch* still using
>_Indo-Germaans_? What's up with that, dude?
>
>I also think that 'Indo-germanic' is a dreadful hangover from the early
>days of the German pioneers in comparative linguistics, but really
>'indo-european' doesn't seem much better to me when you consider the
>modern distribution of these languages- 'Amerindian' would be better if
>it didn't already have a meaning ;-). How about Anglo-Spanish?

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

Hi, Ingmar!

> I think G. indogermanisch or D. Indogermaans originally just were meant
> as: the related languages from the Indic to the Germanic linguistic
> families, so geographically from India until Northern Europe.

Ah!  That's interesting.  I never thought about this possibility, always 
assumed it was based on the Germano-centric ideas among German and other 
philologists (beginning several decades before the rise of the Nazis).

> We shouldn't be afraid of the term Germanic, especially G.
> germanisch, just because of the Nazi abuse of it...

Why not indeed?  Not using it (in the right context) would mean throwing the 
baby out with the bath water and permitting the Nazis to have the power to 
determine what words we may use.  I use "Germanic" all the time as a name 
for the Indo-European sub-group.

I agree about "Indo-European" not feeling quite right either.  But, as you 
said, it's somewhat better, the lesser of two evils.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron 

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