LL-L "Idiomatica" 2008.06.08 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 08 June 2008 - Volume 05
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From: Mike Morgan <mwmosaka at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Idiomatica" 2008.06.06 (07) [E]

I have been out of town for a week or so and am just now going through my
emails in reverse chronological order, so if someone has already contributed
this tidbit, please forgive.

Considering the Lowlandic / Germanic construction:
1.      Dutch: Wat voor hond is dat?
Low Saxon: Wat vör eyn (~ 'n) hund is dat? (Wat för een (~ 'n) Hund is dat?)
German: Was für ein Hund ist das?

We also have here one of the clearest cases where there was Germanic
syntactic borrowing into Russian (and other North Slavic languages ... and
Bulgarian, which at times acts as an hono(u)rary Russian):

E.g.
 *Что за собака* в наше время без блох? (lifted from a quick google search)
What for (a) dog in our time without fleas?

 Interesting here is also that the object of the preposition; where we
should expect an accusative, it is instead in the nominative (something that
prepositional objects are NEVER supposed to do!) ... leading me to believe
that maybe they borrowed the syntax, and then couldn't make heads nor tails
of what to do with the morphology! (or maybe that TOO is borrowed?)


PS If you are in a country with relatively reliable railtransport, count
your lucky stars; Ishara just had an international Deaf camp in the hills up
north of Delhi (outside of Dehradun, a bea-UT-iful place, if you know it),
and everybody who attended but myself and the one Deaf trustee came back by
train. Up to Delhi it was no problem; unfortunately practically all the
trains from Delhi down to Bombay go through Rajasthan (and for the group of
11 or so from Gujarat it is the same story i imagine), and this past 10 days
has been a somewhat violent bandh (protest-cum-transport-stoppage) by the
Gujjars, an ethnic group concentrated mostly in Rajasthan, who are trying to
get Scheduled Caste (SC) status ... something similar to American
affirmative action, but more so (X% of government jobs, Y% of university
seats, etc reserved for members of the caste), and so almost all my staff
had their trains cancelled out from under them. Somehow though they all made
it back (standing-room only for the 26 hr trip is the commonest story I
"heard") ... and on time to start work today ... with smiles on their faces
... something *I* may not have been able to manage had it been me!

MWM || マイク || Мика || माईक || માઈક || ਮਾਈਕ
================
Dr Michael W Morgan
Managing Director
Ishara Foundation
Mumbai (Bombay), India
++++++++++++++++
माईकल मोर्गन (पी.एच.डी.)
मेनेजिंग डॉयरेक्टर
ईशारा फॉउंडेशन (मुंबई )
++++++++++++++++
茂流岸マイク(言語学博士)
イシャラ基金の専務理事・事務局長
ムンバイ(ボンベイ)、インド
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