A polyglot grammar comparative project (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

A polyglot grammar comparative project
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

24 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Iversen
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Message 17 of 24

04 May 2011 at 1:00pm | IP Logged

Haukilahti wrote:

Iversen wrote:

An example: when I do my 'green sheets' with morphology I try always to keep the same sequence of basic cases as I learned in Latin: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative. The Vocative mostly fit above Nominative, and instead of Ablative you find Instrumental and Prepositional/Locative in Russian, in that order. The funny thing is that almost all grammars for Slavic languages I have seen move Accusative past the Genitive, but actually the logical postition is between the Nominative and the Genitive whose forms it often 'borrows'.

The Slavic order is taken directly from the normal Latin order, which is Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, (Vocative), Ablative.

When I learnt Latin in Denmark forty years ago the order was the one I specified above. Maybe there are some country specific traditions.
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Haukilahti
Triglot
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Message 18 of 24

04 May 2011 at 1:15pm | IP Logged

You might guess where I learnt Latin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_in_Latin#Order_of_D eclension_in_Various_Curricula

;-)
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crafedog
Diglot
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Message 19 of 24

04 May 2011 at 1:20pm | IP Logged

Ari wrote:

Instead of arguing about the project, I'll just supply some more info to
help it along, then. The main gist of my previous post was actually meant to be
informative, rather than complainy.

Either way, you raised some good points that need to be considered in the future so
thanks for that.

Ari wrote:

So here's how it works in Swedish: We do have definite and indefinite
articles. They agree with the gender of the noun (we have two genders: 'utrum' and
'neutrum') and their position determines if they're definite or indefinite. So "En bil"
= "A car", "bilen" = "the car". "Ett papper" = "A paper", "Papperet" = "The paper".

I'm such a language nerd. Literally my first thought was "Wow, that's really cool!" I'm
glad no-one was around to hear it.
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Cainntear
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Message 20 of 24

04 May 2011 at 8:39pm | IP Logged

Ari wrote:

crafedog wrote:

As for the Articles entry, for example, some people might not know that Russian does not use articles (right?) but a quick glance at the thread in this 'project' would correct that mis-assumption. I see your mother tongue is Swedish; I honestly don't know at all if Swedish has definite/indefinite article(s). If it does, I don't how many it has, what they look like, if they change etc. I would love to know any detail you could provide about it (or any other language) hence this project.

Instead of arguing about the project, I'll just supply some more info to help it along, then. The main gist of my previous post was actually meant to be informative, rather than complainy.

So here's how it works in Swedish: We do have definite and indefinite articles. They agree with the gender of the noun (we have two genders: 'utrum' and 'neutrum') and their position determines if they're definite or indefinite. So "En bil" = "A car", "bilen" = "the car". "Ett papper" = "A paper", "Papperet" = "The paper".

But here again we've got the argument that an "article" is a clitic, but Danish uses a suffix.

The notion of article is, like much of our traditional grammar, based on Italic and Germanic structure.

I would say the most neutral term comes out of Ari's post: "specifiers".

eg
Within English, most "specifiers" are clitics of the word class "determiners".

Determiners include "this"/"that", articles , and possessives (my, your etc)

In addition to determiners, nouns can be specified by a noun in the possessive (eg "John's").
(And continue to expand of redirect the reader to another place where the concept is dealt with.)

This lets us put things in the same place based on function rather than form, and lets us deal with each language in its own terms.

Now it no longer matters whether the Cantonese thing is an article or not, and we don't have to call the Danish/Swedish/Norwegian definite suffix an "article" simply to get it in the right part of the resource.

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crafedog
Diglot
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Message 21 of 24

05 May 2011 at 9:39am | IP Logged

I begun a new thread called APCG Project - Alphabet/Writing Systems in the "Collaborative
Writing" sub-forum. Please contribute to it as well as this one.

1

[edit: having real problems with hyperlinks today. Click the 1, look in the subforum or
browse my posts]

Edited by crafedog on 05 May 2011 at 11:13am
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Lianne
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Message 22 of 24

03 June 2011 at 10:17pm | IP Logged

Is this still going on? I was having fun. :) I don't think I have anything more to add to the alphabet one, but I can talk about Esperanto on other topics!
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crafedog
Diglot
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Message 23 of 24

05 June 2011 at 6:54am | IP Logged

Lianne wrote:

Is this still going on? I was having fun. :) I don't think I have
anything more to add to the alphabet one, but I can talk about Esperanto on other
topics!

It didn't really get enough interest in it unfortunately. Considering all the users on
this forum who speak/learn many languages yet as of now we've only managed to get 3
users to contribute, it's not a very good sign of this project taking off. If users
won't even contribute to something as simple as the alphabet, then getting them to
contribute to something more complex/detailed is not looking good.

Shame. I thought it would've been interesting for others. If we get some more
contributions, I'll add them and if we get a decent amount of languages I'll start part
2 but for now we'll have to wait and see I guess.
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Lianne
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Message 24 of 24

06 June 2011 at 12:12am | IP Logged

:( That's a shame. I think this project is a really good idea. If it does continue, I'll definitely contribute what I can to each topic.

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