LL-L "Morphology" 2008.08.17 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 17 August 2008 - Volume 03
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.08.16 (04) [E]

Lowlanders,

I've just been swotting up on my grammar again and have been wondering
about inflectional markings in Lowlands languages. How similar are
markings between Lowlands languages? Sticking to verb and noun markings
to start with...

In English, Scots and Shetlandic we have plural markings -s/-es [s],
[z], [@z] and more rarely -en/-n. In Dutch we have -en. Do those two
markings cover the plural formation for all Lowlands languages?

Similarly in these languages only the past tense is marked (-ed and
variants in English, -it, -ed and variants in Scots). Are there
Lowlandic languages that also mark the future?

A perfect aspect in these "Anglic" languages is marked as -en and
progressive or imperfect as as -ing, if my understanding is right. As I
understand it, the imperfect is more usual in English than in the more
eastern varieties of Lowlandic languages, but even more usual in Scots
than in English.

In the Border varieties of Scots (eg Hawick), the gerund is still marked
(or at least was, in living memory - ie, my memory!), traditionally
written as -and although the -d wouldn't be pronounced. As far as I've
picked up from the List, gerunds are still normal "on the Continent",
but marked -ing along with the imperfect in English and most dialects of
Scots.

In English and Scots, the subjunctive mood is still available for use
but going out of fashion. It's marked by a different use of the
available set of inflections.

The use of -en as a plural marker in Scots comes with only a few words,
the only ones regularly heard being "een" (plural of "ee"="eye"),
"shuin" (plural of "shae"="shoe") and "owsen" (not much heard these
days, but it's the plural of "ox"). This has led some to suggest that
this is actually a dual marker in Scots, but I'm inclined to think that
the plural of "hand" being "hands", "lug" being "lugs" and so on,
probably the idea of a dual in Scots isn't supportable.

There could be more if we look more closely at dialect varieties.
Southwestern dialects of English, for example, there's a distinction
between, eg "dig" and "diggy":

"I'm going out to dig the garden."
"I'm going out to diggy."

also resulting in some back-formations:

"I have to study."
"I have to stud grammar."

Here the -y ending is used when the object of the sentence is merely
implied. This usage was recorded by researchers around Yeovil in 1956,
and is seen in older books written in dialect, but I don't know whether
it would still be used anywhere. I wonder if there are other less well
known markings in other dialects?

So it would seem to me that the grammatically productive inflectional
markings in Anglic languages are limited to -(e)s, -ed, -en and -ing
plus some other rarer uses in some dialects.

Are other Lowlands languages much richer in noun and verb markings and
what would we need to describe these for the whole language group?

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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

Interesting one, Sandy.

A comparative approach would indeed be interesting. Taking into account what
we know about the earlier stages of the language and historical events,
especially migrations, one might even find connections there.

By the way, ...

"I'm going out to dig the garden."
"I'm going out to diggy."

also resulting in some back-formations:

"I have to study."
"I have to stud grammar."
This kind of thing is very common in Australian English.

I wonder if it can be stated that simplification of Anglic morphology
(beginning in real earnest in late Middle English) facilitated the creation
of sound-alike deverbal nouns in these languages, "to dig" and "a dig" being
one among numerous cases.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

•

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