LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.27 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  27 September 2007 - Volume 04
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.26 (02) [E/LS]

Dear Marcel & Ron:

Subject: LL-L "Etymology"

Ron, you wrote:
"Mark, I wonder if this endearing -a you talked about is related to
traditional (and now apparently disappearing) -a added to monosyllabic or
abbreviated names of males in Low Saxon of Germany.  The best known of these
is Kalla for Karl (Charles); cf. Swedish Kalle for Karl.  In the ancient
days of my childhood I'd also hear forms like Willa ( ~ Willi) for Willem ~
Wilhelm (William) and Freda (~ Fredi) for Fredrich ~ Friedrich (Frederic)."

& Marcel, you wrote:
Very interesting!! So it is still a suffix, and a productive one! I
never expected this. It sounds rather exotic, but Low Saxon being one of the
languages that contributed to Afrikaans, we shouldn't rule out this European
origin of -a. Maybe the use was enhanced (or conserved) by the presence of
common Afrikaans words of non-Germanic origin, such as *kamma, abba,
hoeka/toeka* and *gogga*.

I'm with you there. In Afrikaans the emphesis seldom falls on the last
syllable of a word, & if I'm right this applies to most Lowlands languages.
The result is that ordinarily the vowel of an open or closed syllable
softens to a schwa '*hon*de', '*bê*re', '*bul*der', '*son*der', 'ge*was*se',
'*op*trede' & '*af*ge*son*der'. Yiddish of course falls under the same
Germanic regime, & also incidentelly the Ashkenazi dialect of Hebrew, so
changing eg 'Shab*bat*' to '*Sha*bes' & 'ma*zal*' to '*moz*zel'. I might add
this is a little limiting to a guy with poetic pretensions, that the rhyming
syllable is weak. The Koikoi loanwords, among them those you quote, stand
out like gems in a setting, two syllables, & both strong: Trochee.

From: Ron
The jury is still out on this one.

Come to think of it, we are quite likely dealing with -er instead of -a .
After all, they sound the same in most dialects, and this suffix is hardly
ever written and is merely approximated if it is.

So it might as well be Kaller instead of Kalla.

Thanks Ron. I really must make a point of first of all reading all of a
letter finished...

Yrs,
Mark

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From: Marcel Bas <marcelbas at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.27 (02) [E/LS]

Hi Reinhard,

You wrote:

"To find -a added to words of Germanic origin in Afrikaans is therefore
surprising. I'm with you there, Marcel.  It also seems to lend credence to
my hypothesis that in Low Saxon we are really dealing with -er in that
case."
The same in Bavarian languages: "hamà" < "habm-mir" "supa" < "super".

"The ending -a is still  treated as foreign in most non-rhotic dialects of
English ( e.g., Africa- r -o-r-Asia), while in most English varieties of
North America it seems to have been nativized ( e.g., Afric a o-r -Asia)."

When a word like this is followed by a vowel, you get intrusive or
linking-r. Interestingly, this does not occur in South African English,
although it is an non-rhotic dialect. E.g. "South Afric*a a*nd Zimbabwe" and
"For Alan" [f@ El at n] rather than "South Afric *a*-*r* and Zimbabwe" and [
fA at r El at n]. But I do not attempt to demonstrate any parallells with the
Afrikaans -a suffix.

In Scandinavian languages, the -a suffix is still retained in feminine words
and the verbal infinitive, but the latter is due to delition of final
-n. But I don't know if the -a suffix in feminine words is still productive,
as in Afrikaans, where it is associated with endearment and diminution. It
seems like a fossilised suffix.


It is, indeed, a foreign final vowel to West Germanic languages.
As Mark says, it is still productive in Afrikaans for a diminutive. The
Etimologiewoordeboek van die Afrikaanse taal seems to agree with the
endearment element.

For "baba" it doesn't say anything about the suffx,
For "bolla" it only says that it derives from Middle Dutch *bolle*,
For "boeta" it does say that *-a *is a derivation from *boet*, and it
originates from children's language. The dictionary says: "Die agtervoegsel
*-a* het die gevoelswaarde van vertroulikheid en toon ook 'n volwassener
verhouding aan." (Bear in mind that  *boeta *is the elderly brother).
"Poena" is not in the dictionary, "harta" is in no dictionary (so that may
be a sign of *-a *being productive), and about the suffix in *gotta, gonna *and
*gomma* ("golly", "gosh") it says nothing about the suffix either, other
than that *gotta *could have been inspired by a Khoi swearing word *
t'ganassi*.


Best regards,

Marcel.
http://roepstem.net

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From: Marcel Bas <marcelbas at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.27 (02) [E/LS]

Dear Lowlanders,

My South African friend Liesl gave me another example of the -a suffix with
an association of endearment:

*bokka*: 'girl' (cf. *bokkie*: girl - literally 'little buck, little goat'.*

*
Best regards,

Marcel.

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From: Marcel Bas <marcelbas at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.27 (02) [E/LS]

Then there is also:

*seuna*  'little son'
*dogga *'little daughter'

Best regards,

Marcel.

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From: "Ben J. Bloomgren" <ben.j.bloomgren at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.09.27 (02) [E/LS]


 Adding -a or suffixes ending in -a to words
of masculine or neuter gender tends to "feminize" them, with few exceptions
such as Latin agricola 'farmer' and Spanish artista 'artist'.

Ron, I don't know the historical linguistics behind this one, but be
careful. Artista is one of IE's many loved exceptions. Artista is with an A
whether it be a man or a woman. El artista o la artista. I would venture a
guess that the A here is not a gender morpheme as it is with, say, pintora
(painter) or Holandesa (dutch woman).
Ben

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

Thanks, Mark and Marcel.

Have you considered the possibility of stressed, long -a in Afrikaans being
a contraction of the obvious word and an "absorbed" following word (such as
an exclamation)?

Contractions of this sort are quite frequent in the world's languages,
especially among African and Eastern Asian languages and also among
indigenous North American languages. In casually spoken Mandarin Chinese
dialects, for instance, exclamatory particle 啊 ā tends to be fused with the
last vowel of the preceding word, and the resulting vowel is somewhat
lengthened (e.g., 白色的啊！báisè de ā! -> báisè dā! 'The white one!'). (In tonal
languages, this tends to involve tonal contractions, in some African
languages resulting in contour tones where contour tones don't otherwise
exist, i.e., are not phonemic.)

So, if something like this happened in Afrikaans, what kind of absorbed word
could be involved here? "A"? "Ha"? "Ja"?  Could it be a particle borrowed
from Malay or Khoi-San?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: Ben, I know that Romance -ista is not feminine, which is why I said "with
few exceptions such as ..."  But I guess that wasn't clear.
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