LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.28 (021 [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 28 April 2006 * Volume 01
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From: "Mark Dreyer" <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.27 (02) [A/E]

Hi Darrin:

Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.25 (07) [A/D/E]

I guess I am not quite clear on what you mean here.  Do I understand you
correctly that it depends on the exact meaning one wishes to convey
whether one should say "Jy't geen kans" or "Jy't geen kans nie"?  I must
admit that I am one of those "Engels-moedertaalsprekendes" who likes to
add the "nie" after "geen".  Have I worked so hard to add that second nie
for nothing?!  Say it ain't so!

Well, Darrin, one day you may find yourself in a position where you'll need
to NEGATE a 'geen' sentence. What then? English also has positive statements
about negative quantities, like 'nothing', only of course English doesn't
use the double negative. Consider "There's nothing to do!" & "There isn't
nothing to do!" The negative is the only change & it reverses the meaning of
the first sentence. What young child or mother hasn't had occasion to use
either? So also for Afrikaans:

"Jy het 'n kans." to "Jy het nie 'n kans nie."
"Jy het geen kans." to "Jy het nie geen kans nie."

Just remember it is in the same kraal as 'min' & 'een' (among others).

Yrs,
Mark

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From: "Marcel Bas" <roepstem at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.27 (07) [D/E]

Hi Rikus,

You wrote:

>The sentence the man in Roden Drenthe is supposed to have said sounds very
>UnRodish to me. Double negotiation in Drents is very seldom used as far as I
>know, and always recognised as wrong use of lnguage. It is difficult to
>express exactly what I would have expected, but it sounds more like: "Ik
>heb'm neit seine(saine). This is much more in accordance to Drents and
>Gronings than "gesien nie". Sein nie en seine are very close, when you hear
>it.
>I think ther is a mistake in listening and decoding going on here.
>But maybe can a Low-Lander born in Roden , member of this LL-list speak a
>final word on this sentence. She is very well known with the typical Roden
>dialect

Maybe. Obviously, he wasn't speaking the way people in Roden do when they
talk to
each other. After all, he was talking to me, and I surely don't sound Low
Saxon. I
don't sound like I come from any region. So what he did was code-switching by
attempting to produce Standard Dutch as much as possible. He changed his own
language in order to be accomodatindg. In dialectology there are three main
versions:

1. The basilect (the version of the language that is closest to its origin
and the
most authentic)
2. The mesolect (the version that is mixing the language in question with
the more
prestigious or standard language)
3. The acrolect (the version where the language is usually a calque of the
standard
language, and usually all that is left is an accent and some words)

Some people can only speak one of the three versions, but many people can
(or try
to) switch from version to version, according to the social situation. I
guess that
is what the man in Roden did when he talked to me. He was simply code
switching. The
same thing often happens, for example, in Scotland and in the Caribbean,
where
people have command of different versions of their own language, with
different
degrees of 'Englishness'.

Often only the acrolect survives. Interestingly, where Creole languages are
concerned, basilects survive best in areas where the language on which the
Creole
language is based, is of no importance. Of all English-based Creole
languages in the
Caribbean the ones in Surinam are very authentic. There Dutch is the
prestigious
language. In Jamaica, the Creole language has basilect, mesolect and
acrolect, but
English has affected the basilect to the extent that you can hardly
compare its
authenticity with that of, say, Sranantongo. I believe that Jamaican
Patois had been
just as 'deeply' Creole as Sranantongo is. It's just that it has been
decreolized,
and Sranantongo has not, since it is surrounded by Dutch.

Best regards,

Marcel.

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From: "Paul Finlow-Bates" <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.26 (07) [E]

From: "Heiko Evermann"
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2006.04.25 (07) [A/D/E]

 The "educated"
language says that it is against logic, but maybe it isn't?
* I have not seen Jim.
* You have not seen Jim.
* Peter has not seen Jim
* Noone has not seen Jim.

Kind regards,

Heiko

  I've often wondered about the "logic" that a double negative cancels
itself out.
This seems to assume that the process is somehow a multiplication: -1 x -1 is
indeed 1.  But if we're going to be mathematical about it, who's to say
that the
process isn't additive? -1 + -1 = -2, or twice as negative!!
  In fact, double negatives are probably more the rule than the exception
if every
variety of English is considered; it just happens not to be the case in the
standard British or American forms and their offshoots.

  Paul Finlow-Bates

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