LL-L "Grammar" 2009.07.29 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 29 July 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2009.07.29 (01) [EN]

Dear Paul, Mike & Ron, but mostly to Ron:

Subject: LL-L Grammer

Mike
> ...hang-ED only in reference to felons"

Paul, is it?
> Yet a news report might refer to "trouble with drunken youths in the town
centre", and you could also say "the youths in the > town centre were all
drunk", but not "the youths were all drunken".
>I struggle to identify any rule here, if there is one!

Mark:
Ron, can it have *nothing* to do with the position of the adjective in
respect of the noun it defines? I mentioned before something like this in
Afrikaans. It seems to be a survival of the weak declensions in the earliest
forms of the languages. It is after an old construction, good & fossilised
in its limited modern usage (at least in English).
One can have a drunken sailor or 'n dronke seeman, but the sailor is
drunk en die seeman is dronk.
An adjective immediately preceding the noun it defines indicates the same
with an '-en' of 'n '-e' suffix. Where the word (no longer necessarily
adjectival in function) appears elsewhere in the sentence the rule doesn't
hold, as in:
'God is good' & 'Se good-a God' (nom. masc. Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer).

I know I'm a cheeky ignoramus.

Yrs sincerely,
Mark

•

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