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Lack of Noun Gender in English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3836 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 121 of 126 07 January 2014 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Indeed, 1e4e6, I saw English's future as an analytic language, a Germanic Cantonese.
Believe me, I would not care if all the conjugationss went tomorrow as long as we had stuff like the above. Cantonese gets along fine without being inflected for anything. It has tone changes and cool helping words and such, word order playing too. If you think what happened to English is bad, look at Mandarin! Their equivalent of gender is nearly dead! I even tried to ask for san wan fan in my Mandarin at the local authentic chinese place and he just replied with "san ge fan". It is practically stripped to the bone compared to Cantonese. One of the features we are missing that is very Germanic are modal particles. John Mcwhorter wrote on why they never came to be in English while all the other West Germanic languages have them and possibly some or all of the Scandinavian ones. I mean, how hard is it for people to use v2 word order all of the sudden, it doesn't sound bad (Down the stairs came I!) sounds very poetic. And modal particles, let's take doch from Dutch and translate it. "I am though coming!" I don't know what it would mean, but just using conjunctions, adverbs, pronouns, and prepositions in their bare form and throwing them in as a flavoring word can't be hard, and I see it in some kids (I am "totally" coming!) but it still sounds cheesy. Edited by Stolan on 08 January 2014 at 1:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4094 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 122 of 126 08 January 2014 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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The subordinate clause word-order SOV is what I think English lacks compared to the
other Germanic languages, in addition to the "be" instead of "have" for the perfect tense with motion or changes of state, i.e. "She had me told that he three hours ago at home arriven was." S O V S V instead of, "She had told me that he had arrived at home three hours ago." S V O S V Edited by 1e4e6 on 08 January 2014 at 1:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4337 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 123 of 126 08 January 2014 at 12:41am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't want to lower the conversation, but isn't the Australian use of "f*ck" acting as a modal predicate? In Australian English it's quite common to say either: It's a beautiful day to have a picnic. F*ck it's a beautiful day to have a picnic. OR That's a big dog walking toward us. F*ck that's a big dog walking towards us. etc. The word doesn't simply act as an emphasis for a certain part of the sentence (e.g., in the first example the beauty of the day), but indicates that the speaker agrees with the statement being expressed. Edited by patrickwilken on 08 January 2014 at 12:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3836 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 124 of 126 08 January 2014 at 1:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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1e4e6, Those are SOV with v2. English ideally could be SVO with v2 and all those cool word order tricks I listed
such as above. In Cantonese, people even says these when their intonation is strong enough or with a particle. If we use SOV default we lose the ability to use accusative cum infinitive sentences that cannot be done in German. We would also lose tagging on gerunds for these occasions. etc. The strange thing is that English lacks impersonal constructions but is very subject focused. "This bed has been slept in" "I swam the pool" etc. Some would have to be translated more literally in German. If we keep what we have and combine the other word order tricks that are available, we can have darn good word order. Oh and don't forget the become passive used in other Germanic languages for dynamic states. Ich bin geschlagen werden.= I am become hit. To add: Alienable vs Unalienable possession. In french, one can say "I open the eyes" A sentence like "She has her father's eyes" can be interpreted two ways but: She has her father's eyes. (She stole them) =/= She has the father's eyes. (Good genes) What else? Modal verbs? Know you the contrast between other Germanic ones and English? Knowest thou? We need an informal pronoun such as thou and reserve "you" for politeness. It took another conjugation when it went but I dont mind the conjugation, but I wan't the pronoun. Also ken vs know, (ken is now dialectal) All the things above have equivalents in Mandarin wherein Mandarin has been watered down compared to other Chinese languages. Ah I love comparison. Edited by Stolan on 08 January 2014 at 1:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5234 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 125 of 126 08 January 2014 at 6:22am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't want to argue this point indefinitely but I really don't get this. If I understand the argument here, certain non-standard varieties of English have features that can be put in paralell with comparable features of standard English. Thus we have non-standard "we is" and the standard "we are.", the non-standard "It ain't" and the standard "It isn't." The non-standard forms are not used in the standard language and I agree with the statement " However, the non-standard English colloquialisms only rest within their sphere of informal or dialectal speech, never entering the realm of standard English, especially formal and/or written English." It seems to me that this is why we call certain things non-standard. What I don't understand is the following phrase: "This is not the case with French or Spanish--in formal speech, one obviously says "la belle voiture", but also in dialetical or informal speech." To me it seems that the first part of this sentence says that unlike English, colloquialisms in French or Spanish do not rest within their sphere and do enter the realm of standard French or Spanish. I don't think this is correct. And the sentence "Should there exist such a dialect whereby a gendered language can ignore gender, then stand I corrected." seems like a begging the question to me. How can a gendered language ignore gender if a gendered language is defined by gender? Although I'm a bit confused, I gather from the rest of the text that the argument here is that there are no forms of non-standard or dialectal French or Spanish (and other languages) that ignore gender. Well that's a different subject. The question seems to be then: Taking the example of one language, are there forms of French that do not use gender? You won't see genderless or gender-neutral dialects of French in Europe or in Quebec. But as soon as one looks at French spoken on the periphery in contact with other languages, such as in Africa or Haiti, there are many examples of the loss or the simplification of grammatical gender. Here is a study of "le français populaire du Burkina" spoken in Burkina Faso. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/lfr_0 023-8368_1994_num_104_1_5739 I direct the reader's attention to section 3.1.3 Marque du genre, in which the author mentions that Burkina French recognizes natural gender and not grammatical gender. This is interesting because when there is no clearcut natural gender, the speaker will omit all gender markings, including the articles as in "comment va santé maison?" instead of the standard "comment va la santé de la maison?" All throughout Africa there are dialects of French that ignore gender. We know that the French-based creoles ignore grammatical gender, and I think we can safely assume that the popular French spoken next to these creoles probably exhibit some loss of gender agreement. Aand this is totally acceptable within the dialect of course, not in standard French. As for Spanish and German, I can't reply, but I did mention previously the case of American Russian where the complex case system of standard Russian has completely collapsed. Edited by s_allard on 08 January 2014 at 6:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3836 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 126 of 126 08 January 2014 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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S_allard, the same is in Chinese dialects. In varieties of Mandarin Chinese often spoken in the North, the only
measure word left is "ge" Like 3 ge house in English literally, In Cantonese you have about many in use for common thing (you can get by without all of them but if you want to write literature, best look them up) Like 3 tsot movies 3 dzi armies 3 ga cars 3 bung water 3 go man You can even say the classifier followed by the object as a pseudo definite article go yan (the guy) Mandarin? Many of the uses are now variable and falling away. The particles are now only distinguished in writing 的地得 all three with different purposes are said the same in Mandarin, Cantonese pronounces each differently. I suspect mass integration of ethnic groups or alternate dialect speakers. The thing is that many think these kinds of happening, specifically the type that is probably eurocentric, is isolated to English, that loss of inflection is one direction of simplification but simplification occurs outside of inflection and happens in less specification and distinctions. An example is Indonesian which is agglutinating and inflecting but regular and possibly the easiest language in the world. Turkish is not easy but it is regular too. Other languages have gone through what English has too, but still people don't realize how simplified Mandarin is and cite it as a "hard" language, the writing maybe, but it is so watered down and simplified, may as much as English, or more in grammar. Same with Persian, but people stare so widely at English being simplified due to large aquisition. Spanish too, people think it is not simplfiied, while it may be inflecting, it is more straightforward than French, and the biggest area of simplification is pronounciation. Only 5 vowels, 18 consonants, and few clusters of consonant while being syllable times so there is no vowel reduction of "schwa"ing, no vowel shifts in compound words, etc. I just want you to understand, Allard, what I am getting across. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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