Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2000 02:03:03 GMT From: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@inwind.it> To: Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net>, Peter Lai <PeterL@resnet.uconn.edu>, "'Y u r i '" <ure@home.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Tyr'd with all this pronunciation thread Message-ID: <20001203.2030300@bartequi.ottodomain.org> References: <9F36E367710D474E9806AA393FE737FB019EEF@resnetnt.resnet.uconn.edu> <20001202120629.A1360@buffy.local> <00120212230600.01687@buffy>
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[ok, it's Sunday, let's lower our signal-to-noise ratio...]
[I CC to -chat in order to avoid being charged with spamming :-) ]
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
On 12/2/00, 12:23:06 PM, Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> wrote
regarding Re: Tyr'd with all this pronunciation thread:
> > Auf wiederhoren..
^
^
^
<nit-picking mode>
Missing umlaut...
And just to add to this, cf umlaut and ablaut...
</nit-picking mode>
> > Cliff
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 02, 2000 at 05:06:02AM -0500, Peter Lai wrote:
> > > i'd have to agree
> > >
> > > English is classified as a Germanic languague because that is what=
the
> > > core is written in :)
Actually, in an Indo-European linguistic perspective, English is a
Western Germanic language. The Germanic branch itself, in turn,
belongs to the Western Indo-European group, ie the one including eg
Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek.
BTW, a number of "Germanic" (ie Gemeingermanisch) words related to the
environment at large (eg "sea") are not of Indo-European origin.
> > > Then people added more and more words from other languages that we=
re
> > > ported over to English. :)
The whole story is rather complex. For instance, over time, the
"Germanic peoples" themselves influenced one another in a rather
complicated fashion (cf Gothic, Elbgermanisch, Nordseegermanisch...;
also, from a general standpoint, cf "Vorgermanisch",
"Gemaingermanish", "Urgermanisch", "Fruehurgermanisch",
"Spaetgemeingermanisch); those interrelations have been (partly)
reconstructed.
> > > Syntatical structure is quite unique, based on the Latin system.
Hmmm, the following considerations spring to mind:
--) Indo-european is (most probably) an inflected (lato sensu)
paratactic SOV "language";
--) "Gemaingermanish" is (most probably) an inflected (lato sensu)
paratactic SOV "language";
[...]
--) Archaic Latin is an inflected (lato sensu) paratactic SOV
language, too; "classical" Latin is an inflected **hypotactic** SOV
language (remember the dreaded "consecutio temporum" ?).
<aside>
Cf the remains of ablaut in Latin (eg tego/toga); cf ablaut in
(classical) Greek -- eg in such cases as leipo, elipon, leloipa --,
and in the Germanic languages (the so-called "stark/strong/etc."
verbs: eg Goth. bindan, band, bundum, bundans; Engl. bind,bound,bound;
Germ. binden, band, gebunden);
</aside>
<case simplification in most I.E. languages; from synthetical to
analytical languages; from SOV to SVO languages; Latin/"French"/etc.
influence on "English"; Lautverschiebung et al. snipped>
--) English has been moving towards a positional ("isolating")
structure, and is not a very hypotactic language.
Incidentally, in a typological respect, the so-called
reconstructed "Indo-European", which had a relatively more complex
case system (namely, 8 cases) if compared to its branches, is
not considered a "highly-inflected" language. Other languages have
**far** richer case systems.
An authoritative description of the English language is found in "A
Contemporary Grammar Of The English Language" by Quirk, Greenbaum,
Leech, Svartvik, published in 1985 by Longman (~ 1,800 pages).
Best regards,
Salvo
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