Balkan tongues (was: biloxi update)

[ROOD DAVID S]

>
>  > (David) No, Gothic behaves very much like German and Old English in
> this regard. <<
>
> Yes, but what's with Gothic "Atta unsar þu in himinam..." ?
> I know that it's not the definite article postposed here (it seems that
> old Gothic doesn't have a definite article) - but is this like in German
> "Vater unser" with the possessive pronoun postposed in an
> 'ungrammatical' way?

	My Gothic is very rusty -- haven't looked at it in about 35 years
(talk about crusty!).  I'm going to guess that this example is imitative
of the Latin from which it was likely translated and not typical.


>
> BTW, how do you judge the Lakota construction "Ateunyanpi mahpiya ekta
> nanke cin"? Aren't there two sentences: "ateunyan pi" and "(mahpiya
> ekta) nanke" made a noun with kind of adjectival phrase by the following
> 'definite article' _kin_?

Ate7unyanpi is a nominalized verb; a very ordinary way to say "my father"
is atewaye kin.  It's the head of a relative clause; the clause is marked
by the final "kin".  There is no article after "ate7unyanpi" because heads
of relative clauses are ALWAYS marked indefinite, even if they're unique,
like this one is.  At least, that's my analysis.

David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA