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The Daltaí Boards » Archive: 2005- » 2010 (November-December) » Archive through December 21, 2010 » Declension Causes Gender Change? « Previous Next »

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 2
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 12:07 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Someone sent me a link to this old discussion:
quote:

Many of the forms given by David above are also true for Corca Dhuibhne and Munster in general. Talamh in CD is masculine in the nominative but feminine in the genitive. The same is also true of eagla - an t-eagla, ach na heagla. Geimhreadh is feminine in the nominative but masculine in the genitive - an gheimhreadh but lár an gheimhridh!


http://www.daltai.com/discus/messages/13510/52679.html?1286450916

Gender variations are common in many languages, especially when there are no clear gender markers, but this sounds to me like an odd mysterious phenomenon.

Can declension really change the gender in some cases? Or could it be just some lenition anomaly? Are there more examples of such a thing?

(Message edited by Laplandian on December 15, 2010)

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Lughaidh
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Post Number: 3739
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 08:02 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

It doesn't really change the gender, it's more like an evolution caused by the analogy with some other word. But if a masculine noun becomes feminine in the genitive for example, if in your sentence the noun is in the genitive (ie. "apparent" feminine gender) you won't use "sí" to refer to it. It's just a "superficial" gender change, caused by analogy.

I read somewhere than in Donegal, "athair mór" may become feminine in the genitive (if I remember well) by analogy with "máthair mhór", I think people say "teach m'athara móire" for instance (instead of "teach m'athara mhóir").
I think "am" becomes feminine in the genitive: an t-am ; i rith na hama, by analogy with something else.

Learn Irish pronunciation here: http://loig.cheveau.ifrance.com/irish/irishsounds/irishsounds.html & http://fsii.gaeilge.org/

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Laplandian
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Post Number: 3
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 04:24 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Thank you!

So it's not the real gender then, but merely a gender-like exceptional grammatical form.

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Corkirish
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Username: Corkirish

Post Number: 384
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 04:53 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Laplandian, I am not sure Lughaidh is drawing a useful distinction. The genders of some nouns do change in the genitive, and that governs the article, declension and adjectival forms used with them. All Lughaidh means is that the gender of the pronoun used to refer to a noun wouldn't depend on its gender in the genitive, but the nominative, although even this is not totally true.

Cailín, masculine, is referred to as sí - because the real sex of girl is feminine. I think the possessive particle would also relate to real sex rather than grammatical gender. Note that cailín is masculine in all cases, but referred to as sí.

Bád is also masculine in all cases, but referred to as sí.

Ó Siadhail claims "leabhar" is also referred to as sí in Galway.

(Message edited by corkirish on December 15, 2010)

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Peter
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Post Number: 736
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 04:56 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

The change in grammatical gender depending on whether a noun occurs in the singular or plural is quite common in Hebrew. I'm told that this affects subject-verb agreement as well as the choice of an anaphoric pronoun so that, for example, a masculine noun in the singular becomes a fully-fledged feminine noun in the plural.

Also, there are some similar examples from French, see what Wikipedia has to say on the grammatical number in French: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_grammar#Nouns .

Although we can indeed explain some of the alternations through analogy, I doubt that this accounts for all of the case I have mentioned.

(Message edited by peter on December 15, 2010)

'Na trí rud is deacra a thoghadh – bean, speal agus rásúr'

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Corkirish
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Post Number: 385
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 05:33 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Peter, I think analogy accounts for the majority of instances, but so what? The genders still change.

it is partly due to rival declensions of the same word:

talamh - can have a masculine genitive tailimh (note: slender l) or a feminine talmhan (note: splled talún in the CO) in Cork Irish.

Mí na Márta is another one - where a masculine Márta has the genitive "na Márta"

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Laplandian
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Post Number: 4
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 05:37 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

I found more examples in Mícheál Ó Siadhail's Modern Irish: Grammatical Structure and Dialectal Variation, pp. 145-147. I don't have the book, but these particular pages show up in Google Books, when I searched for "i rith na hama".

ar leoraí; leoraí mhór (Gd)
an t-aistir; aistir mhaith (Cf)
an méid; méid mhaith (Cf)
an t-eolas; eolas mhaith (Cf)
an cleachtadh; cleachtadh mhaith (Cf)
an radharc; radharc bhreá (Ky)
an talamh; na talún (Cf)
deatach géar; baladh an deataí (Cf)

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Laplandian
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Post Number: 5
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 05:46 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

Ó Siadhail claims "leabhar" is also referred to as sí in Galway.


Corkirish, Ó Siadhail also says that it declines as a regular feminine form in Ranafast: leabhar mhaith; clúdach na leabhra.

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Laplandian
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Post Number: 6
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 06:51 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

The change in grammatical gender depending on whether a noun occurs in the singular or plural is quite common in Hebrew. I'm told that this affects subject-verb agreement as well as the choice of an anaphoric pronoun so that, for example, a masculine noun in the singular becomes a fully-fledged feminine noun in the plural.


You are right, Peter, but I think it's a somewhat different story. Hebrew has very few distinct dual nouns, mostly body parts and amounts of time (two hands, two weeks etc.). All dual nouns require plural adjectives, pronouns and verbal forms. However, the conceptual distinction between dual and plural objects still exists.

This causes certain complexity. One hand (יד) is masculine, but two hands (ידיים) or many hands (ידות) are plural. But a pair or a collection of objects is not exactly the same thing as a single object in Hebrew. Imagine saying "handpair" and "handitude" in English. I think that single, dual and plural Hebrew nouns are somewhat disjoint in their semantics and may be conceived as slightly different kinds of objects.

But I don't see how this could happen to genitives.

(Message edited by Laplandian on December 15, 2010)

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Peter
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Post Number: 737
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 06:51 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

David, I remember Peter Matthews saying something about the abuse of the notion of analogy in diachronic linguistics in his 'Short History of Structural Linguistics'. Indeed, it is a bit of a catch-all explanation.

I have only a very general idea of how things work in Hebrew and so I am not in a position to argue about the reasons of the nominal gender alternations. But I will see what I can find about it, luckily there are specialists on Semitic languages around.

'Na trí rud is deacra a thoghadh – bean, speal agus rásúr'

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Seánw
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Post Number: 941
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 06:59 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Laplandian,
Plurals in Biblical Hebrew often mark something other than plurality. A big example is elohim, a plural which refers only to God. But it is matched with a singular verb. I think we have to step out of our way of thinking about it.

As for Irish, can it have anything to do with lenition of the adjective which follows. The genitives criss-cross each other.

I ndiaidh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin.

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Peter
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Post Number: 738
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 07:03 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Laplandian, I was given as an example of this phenomenon the (Israeli) Hebrew word for chair, which I don't remember now. I was told it's masculine in the singular but takes a feminine plural morpheme and behaves in the plural just like ordinary feminine plural nominals do, i.e. agrees with the verb in the feminine gender when in the subject position and is referred by a feminine plural anaphoric pronoun. I was told there's a bunch of nouns that behave just like this one. The case with duals is clearly different.

'Na trí rud is deacra a thoghadh – bean, speal agus rásúr'

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Lughaidh
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Username: Lughaidh

Post Number: 3741
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 07:25 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

David, I remember Peter Matthews saying something about the abuse of the notion of analogy in diachronic linguistics in his 'Short History of Structural Linguistics'. Indeed, it is a bit of a catch-all explanation.



I'd be glad to hear other explanations...
To me, what defines the gender of a noun in Irish is mainly the way it behaves in the nominative/accusative case (since it's the most common one).
The nouns who change gender in the genitive aren't numerous in Irish. I'd like to know why they change gender and apart from analogy I don't find any explanation for most of them (some of the exceptions are méid, oiread srl, that were neuter nouns in Old Irish, I think, or that have changed gender but may have retained some forms of their old gender).

Athair wasn't feminine nor neuter in Old Irish.
Am was neuter and has become masculine - but why does "an t-am" become "na hama" in the G in Donegal ? Can't be because of Old Irish, because it was "a n-am, in a(i)m" then...

Learn Irish pronunciation here: http://loig.cheveau.ifrance.com/irish/irishsounds/irishsounds.html & http://fsii.gaeilge.org/

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Laplandian
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 11:10 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Seánw, this is a different phenomenon. Elohim is an example of pluralis excellentiae, honorific plural. Corresponding pronouns, adjectives and verbs remain almost always single in this case, though there are a couple of exceptions in the Bible. Another example is Adonay, which literally means "my Lords".

Peter, I must apologize for misinformation. A "hand" is always feminine in Hebrew, whether it's singular, dual or plural, and so are all other nouns with dual forms.

The word for chair is (כסא - kise) and it remains masculine in classical Hebrew, but its plural form (כסאות - kisaot) has a suffix used mostly for feminine nouns. Maybe some modern speakers make it feminine by analogy, but it's considered bad grammar. You can find such examples in old texts too, usually written by authors who didn't bother to study the grammar properly.

It depends what you call "proper grammar", though. There are a plenty of old Hebrew texts that use all sorts of dialectal stuff that you will not find in any published grammar, i.e. amusing calques from Judeo-Arabic and Yiddish. Colloquial Eastern European Hebrew is actually one of my areas of study.

I read Hebrew fluently, but I read mostly pre-modern texts and I'm not a grammar expert. According to the grammar, which I have checked just now, singular and plural nouns in Hebrew always have the same gender. Masculine nouns often take a suffix that looks like feminine, but they are still masculine and require masculine pronouns, verbs etc.

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Laplandian
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Posted on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 11:47 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Peter, take a look at these Russian examples:

quote:

Колебания в роде встречаются у существительных с суффиксами субъективной оценки: высится уродливый домина - построили уродливую домину
....
Слова мужского рода: голос - голосина, дождь - дождина (но в винительном падеже определение при этих словах имеет форму женского рода: громоподобную голосину, огромную домину).



An entire class of Russian augmentative nouns behaves exactly like those few Irish words, being masculine in nominative and feminine in accusative!

Not such a unique phenomenon then, huh?

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Carmanach
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 05:18 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Bear in mind as well that there are a handful of feminine nouns in Irish, "áit", for example, which take a masculine pronoun.

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Carmanach
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Post Number: 807
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 05:21 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Tuairim and ainm are two other feminine nouns which take a masculine pronoun in Corca Dhuibhne.

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Peter
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Post Number: 739
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 06:03 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Lughaidh, I like your analogy explanation for 'athair mór' becoming feminine in the genitive singular, I think you're right. But I don't know how it works for the other cases and I don't have an explanation so and I'm just speculating.

In the light of the historic evidence provided by Laplandian, it looks like those masculine nouns taking a feminine plural morpheme have changed their gender in the plural accordingly at least for some speakers of Israeli Hebrew. This you can say has occurred by analogy with the ordinary feminine plurals.

Laplandian, thanks for the Russian examples. I have to confess I don't think I use augmentative nouns with -ина that much. The ones with -ище (голосище) work most naturally for me. For me, -ина primarily derives singularities from mass nouns and pluralia tantum, e.g. горох - горошина. I particularly like those two from where I come: лыжи (skis) - лыжина, гантели (dumbbells) - гантелина. Although they have normal singular forms in Standard Russian (лыжа, гантель), they are often pluralia tantum where I come from and so use this -ина suffix to derive the words for one ski and one dumbbell.

I think I would say:

Такой дождина полил. (masc. nom.) - На меня упала дождина. (fem. nom.) [augmentative v singularity]

Они такую домину отгрохали. (fem. acc.) - Там такой домина стоит. (masc. nom.)

So, I guess this works for me, although it's really marginal.

'Na trí rud is deacra a thoghadh – bean, speal agus rásúr'

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Peter
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Post Number: 740
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 06:53 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Seo cuid de na focla ar féidir leo foirmeacha firinscneacha agus baininscneacha a bheith acu i nGaeilge Chois Fhairrge, de réir Thomás de Bhaldraithe: aistir, cleachtadh, deatach, eolas, leabhar, méid, oiread, talamh.

Ina cheann sin, deir sé gur féidir foirmeacha baininscneacha a bheith ag na hainmfhocla teibí a chríochnaíonns le 'eadas', cé gur firinscneach iad go hiondúil: an mheirbheadas sin a tháinig.

Is iondúil a dhéantar trácht ar ais ar na focla firinscneacha seo a leannas le forainm bainiscneach (Ó Siadhail):

(i) meaisineanna agus 'córacha iompair': bád, bus, leoraí, meaisín, rásúr, soitheach;

(ii) ainmhithe: capall, francach;

(iii) baill éadaí: caipín, geansaí;

(iv) leabhar.

'Na trí rud is deacra a thoghadh – bean, speal agus rásúr'

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Corkirish
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 07:21 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Elohim is not an honorific plural (although it is explained like that today), but rather a hold-over from the pre-Yahweh days when Abraham's ancestors were polytheistic.

Ailín, I was interested to see your comment that the feminine noun ainm is referred to as "é". I saw this in Niamh:

quote:

Bhí a gruaig ar dhath an óir. Bhí idir ghruaig agus dath chomh saibhir sin gur tugadh “Niamh Chinn Óir” mar ainm cheana uirthi nuair a bhí sí ina leanbh beag. D’oir an ainm chomh maith san di gur lean sé dhi.



I was surprised to see "sé" there referring to ainm, but I assumed it was referring to Niamh Chinn Óir in a general sense, but your comments are a more logical explanation. Is é ainm atá air ná..., is é mo thuairim ná...

I am wondering if things like "leabhar" referred to in the feminine reflect the centuries of illiteracy of many Irish peasants, and the fact they didn't do much reading and didn't learn their grammar? But I expect this can't really be used as the explanation, because, eg in Russia, most people were illiterate before the Russian Revolution, but they still spoke a case language properly. So it is probably just linguistic evolution.

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Grma
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 07:48 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Corkirish,

The illiteracy of Gaelic-speaking peasants may be overstated: I remember reading accounts from Johnson and Boswell in the Hebrides where they were surprised to find that there was rarely a cabin where there wasn't a number of books, often in continental languages. I'll try and find the source.

Likewise, learning was always highly respected in rural Ireland (even if after 1800 literacy in English was the goal), especially given the impoverishment of the old literary classes who continued in many cases to try and maintain some semblance of acting as a library for those interested in reading in Irish.

Just a thought - I am no expert.

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Corkirish
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 08:20 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

"Just a thought" - unfortunately not in line with the facts though. There were parts of Ireland where a literate tradition continued all the way through (Muskerry), and parts (Galway) where even the poets were illiterate. Even in Muskerry, you would have been talking about a handful of people who could read and write, not everyone. This in fact created an interesting storytelling culture, where people would listen to the seanchaithe.

Grma, the social conditions of the Hebrides were not necessarily exactly the same as in Ireland.

"learning was always highly respected in rural Ireland" - Grma, this comment evinces profound ignorance of the social conditions of the Irish peasantry in the pre-famine period. Most people were living in desperate circumstances having 15 or 16 children on tiny plots of land, living in huts where the rain dripped in. Manuscripts to hand were frequently burned for fuel. This is quite apart from the fact that the Roman Catholic clergy frequently denounced the reading and writing of Irish from the pulpit, including not a few who told their flock that they would "go to hell" if they read Irish [owing to the fact that the Protestants were trying to use Irish to propagandise for the Church of Ireland]. Only the very rich wore shoes.

It would be more accurate to say that literacy was valued before the flight of the Earls, but the Gaelic culture as successfully weakened by the Conquest, and only small handfuls of people could be bothered with the language in any learned way in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries.

(Message edited by corkirish on December 16, 2010)

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Grma
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 08:34 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Okay, Corkirish, I'm profoundly ignorant then, if you wish to be presumptious about my level of knowledge or lack thereof.

On the other hand, I could have simply ommitted the well-known fact about the burning of precious manuscripts because I was taking a long-term view that stretched back before the Flight of the Earls.

Likewise, I am aware that Irish speakers in the nineteenth century associated written Irish with proselytisation, and that that exacerbated the situation in relation to the esteem of the language.

I may not be an expert and I may have "just a thoughts" but I am certainly well aware of the minutiae of Irish social history. I chose to omit as much as I could for the sake of brevity and thought a polite caveat about not being an expert would suffice because my post was primarily just a mention of Boswell and Johnson in the context of peasant illiteracy, not rural poverty per se.

In future I shall take care to write my "just a thoughts" in exhausting detail so that I don't end up demonstrating "profound ignorance" that I wasn't even aware I suffered from.

(Message edited by grma on December 16, 2010)

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Laplandian
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 09:47 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Peter,
quote:

I have to confess I don't think I use augmentative nouns with -ина that much.


It appears that the Russian link I provided before doesn't work. I found these examples here:
http://wiki.bettybotta.ru/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D1%80 %D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D1%81%D1%83%D1%89%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82% D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D1%85_%28%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B 5%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%B2_%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B5,_%D1%80%D0%BE%D0 %B4_%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%8F%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8B%D1%85_%D1 %81%D1%83%D1%89%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8 B%D1%85,_%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0% B8%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BD%D1%8B%D1%85_%D1%81%D1%83%D1%89%D0% B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D1%85%29
I also use primarily -ище, but it probably depends in dialect. The same page give a plenty of dialectal and obsolete words and phrases that sound odd to me.
quote:

Такой дождина полил. (masc. nom.) - На меня упала дождина. (fem. nom.) [augmentative v singularity]


I believe that these two are homonyms. It's like a little girly vs. a girly thing.
quote:

So, I guess this works for me, although it's really marginal.


As marginal as it is, this suffix works systematically for many Russian words.

The same thing may happen occasionally with some other affectionate suffixes too:

Мой кот - страшный зверюга; Видели моего кота - страшную зверюгу?

But I'm not sure about this case, because both masculine and feminine forms seem possible.

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 10
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 10:17 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Corkirish,
quote:

Elohim is not an honorific plural (although it is explained like that today), but rather a hold-over from the pre-Yahweh days when Abraham's ancestors were Elohim is not an honorific plural (although it is explained like that today), but rather a hold-over from the pre-Yahweh days when Abraham's ancestors were polytheistic.


This word has indeed polytheistic etymology and is commonly used for a few different things in the Bible: pagan gods, judges and human rulers. But it was already conceived as honorific in Biblical times, because it's grammatically singular.

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Seánw
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Post Number: 943
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Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 11:25 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

Seánw, this is a different phenomenon. Elohim is an example of pluralis excellentiae, honorific plural. Corresponding pronouns, adjectives and verbs remain almost always single in this case, though there are a couple of exceptions in the Bible. Another example is Adonay, which literally means "my Lords".


I just meant to express that Hebrew (in my case, Biblical) does not always follow hard-and-fast rules for plurality that we conceive in our own languages. I've also seen many nouns which are listed as both masculine and feminine because they don't show a unique pattern of usage.
quote:

Elohim is not an honorific plural (although it is explained like that today), but rather a hold-over from the pre-Yahweh days when Abraham's ancestors were polytheistic.


In addition to what Laplandian said, I would add that El was available in the singular before the revelations to Abraham. El was already used for the "supreme God" in other areas, so it seems rather a leap to think they'd have Elohim as a holdover from polytheism while El was available (and used). Since they had two (and more) terms for God, the argument that it meant something more significant holds more weight in my mind.

I ndiaidh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin.

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Laplandian
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Post Number: 11
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 11:27 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Corcirish,
quote:

I am wondering if things like "leabhar" referred to in the feminine reflect the centuries of illiteracy of many Irish peasants, and the fact they didn't do much reading and didn't learn their grammar? But I expect this can't really be used as the explanation, because, eg in Russia, most people were illiterate before the Russian Revolution, but they still spoke a case language properly. So it is probably just linguistic evolution.


Most languages in the world didn't have literacy until recent times and some are still rarely written, but their grammars are pretty stable.

One good example is the Romani language. It had no written literature until the end of the 19th century, most speakers still rarely write it, very few learn it formally in school and many use another language for daily conversation outside the family. However, the Romani Indian case system is generally well preserved, better than in Hindi and Bengali, and the grammatical gender is fairly stable, like in Russian.

An opposite example is Bulgarian. It had a well established and highly influential literary tradition since the 9th century, and its archaic literary norm, known as Church Slavonic, is still used and actively studied as a sacred language by the Russian Orthodox clergy. In fact, old Russian literature was written mostly in Church Slavonic; colloquial Russian used to be considered a crude vernacular up until the Enlightenment.

However, despite such high esteem of the old Bulgarian language and its rich literary tradition, modern Bulgarian completely lost its case system and the infinitive. These changes had occurred due to massive multilingualism and constant heavy contact with other Balkan languages.

It appears that literacy and formal education don't necessarily slow the linguistic evolution, and vise versa. In the case of Irish peasants, literacy probably had a rather unfortunate opposite effect. The National School system was not exactly promoting their native language...

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Corkirish
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Username: Corkirish

Post Number: 399
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 12:06 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Laplandian, I have Finnish ancestors and have occasionally dipped into the suomi - but finnish was a spoken language for centuries, definitely before Mikael Agricola, and even after that the main language was Swedish for a long time. And you can see a great number of analogies in Finnish nouns - which are, frankly, a mess.

My PDF of Finnish noun declension is at http://www.corkirish.com/MSF/declension.pdf - Yucca Korpela, a famous Finnish linguist, sent me a long email about the analogies that have messed up Finnish noun declension. I was thinking of Finnish when I wrote the sentences above about illiteracy leading to analogical developments, but it is confusing that in some nations, eg Russia, the same process did not happen. Why? Is it because the Russian was a monolingual society? (I know the elite often spoke French and some couldn't speak Russian before the revolution, but I think we are talking only about the very apex of Czarist society there), whereas the elite in Finland spoke Swedish and the elite in Ireland spoke English - thus allowing the language to drift analogically among the peasantry in both Ireland and Finland?

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Corkirish
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Username: Corkirish

Post Number: 400
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 12:14 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

I thought a Laplander would be finnish, but now I see you are in the USA and only speak Russian and Hebrew/Aramaic/Yiddish - I would get of Odessan extraction? So you're not Finnish then??

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 12
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 01:05 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

I thought a Laplander would be finnish, but now I see you are in the USA and only speak Russian and Hebrew/Aramaic/Yiddish - I would get of Odessan extraction? So you're not Finnish then??


Neither, Corkirish.

I'm from Ingrian (Inkeri) extraction. More precisely, from Leningrad/St. Petersburg. My ancestry is Russian, Jewish, possibly Finno-Ugric and God knows what else. And while I live in the USA, I'm actually not an American, but an Irish citizen. :-)

I find ancient Finno-Ugric shamanic cultures fascinating and I specially feel bad for the declining Ingrian nations - Veps, Izhorians and Votians. But I am a Yiddishist and a supporter of Yiddish-based non-Israeli Jewish communities.

Hence my nickname. The real land is Sápmi. Lapland is a virtual land that summarizes more or less my messy multiple identities and interests.

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Corkirish
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Username: Corkirish

Post Number: 403
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 01:17 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Can you speak any Finno-Ugric tongue? In addition to Veps, Votian I think there is Ludian and a few others...

Are there any Yiddish speakers still living in Birobidzhan? I'd be fascinated to know that? I shared a flat in China with an Israeli of Russian origin - who had moved to Israel as a child without speaking a word of Hebrew...

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 13
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 01:30 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Corkirish,

I have a general understanding of comparative Finno-Ugric grammar though and once tried to study a little bit Finnisn.

Finnish nouns have no gender and the cases behave more or less like enclitics.

The "messy" Finnish declension, if I understood you correctly, has to do with different choice of case ending in various dialects. However, unlike the Indo-European languages, Finnish has no noun-adjective-verb agreements, but lots (14 or more?) clitic-like cases that are simply attached to the nouns.

I think there is much more place for analogy and variation here than in inflected languages.

(Message edited by Laplandian on December 16, 2010)

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 14
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 01:59 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

Can you speak any Finno-Ugric tongue? In addition to Veps, Votian I think there is Ludian and a few others...

Are there any Yiddish speakers still living in Birobidzhan? I'd be fascinated to know that? I shared a flat in China with an Israeli of Russian origin - who had moved to Israel as a child without speaking a word of Hebrew...



To speak - no, but I studied a little bit Finnish and Hungarian, and I read briefly the grammar of other Finno-Ugric languages. Just a couple of weeks ago I was reading a Komi grammar.

Yes, there is also Ludian, though it's usually considered a dialect of Karelian.

There are still a couple of hundred Yiddish speakers in Birobidzhan, mostly older people. Some local schools are technically supposed to teach some Yiddish to the local children (mostly ethnic Russians and Ukrainians), but the program is extremely poorly designed and no one has motivation to study the language. So Yiddish is rarely spoken there.

Hebrew was always actively used for literary and liturgical purposes, but no Jewish community before the 20th century used it as a daily conversational language. A few educated men could speak Hebrew, like some educated Catholics could speak Latin, but every Jewish ethnic group spoke either its own colloquial language or dialect, or the surrounding language with minor variations.

Russian Jews born before the 1950s should be expected to know Yiddish, but not Hebrew. They should be able to understand many words though, because many Yiddish words are of Hebrew or Aramaic origin.

(Message edited by Laplandian on December 16, 2010)

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Peter
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Username: Peter

Post Number: 741
Registered: 01-2006


Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 02:15 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Back home I took a few courses on general linguistics with Tatyana Agranat who specialises in Votian. I remember she was campaigning against the construction of some sea port on the traditional Votian land where some old people still spoke the language in a couple of villages. The resettlement plan would spell the death of the language. I wonder what the current state of affairs is.


quote:

I am wondering if things like "leabhar" referred to in the feminine reflect the centuries of illiteracy of many Irish peasants, and the fact they didn't do much reading and didn't learn their grammar?



David, all this talk about the educated and good language is pseudo-scientific nonsense that linguistics was cleared of once and for all at the beginning of the twentieth century, due to the efforts of, by and large, American anthropologists (Franz Boas and his students). The elitist, chauvinistic view on language was still popular back then, alongside racist anthropology, Arian mathematics and such. You are 100 years late and those who might have seriously engaged in this discussion with you are long dead. I'm writing this because this nonsense comes up in the thread that I'm contributing to and so that it's clear that I don't associate myself with any of this.

(Message edited by peter on December 16, 2010)

'Na trí rud is deacra a thoghadh – bean, speal agus rásúr'

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Corkirish
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Username: Corkirish

Post Number: 404
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 02:24 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

> I write this because this nonsense comes up in the thread that I'm contributing to and so that it's clear that I don't associate myself with any of this.
--------------------- --------

Well let me make clear I don't associate myself with Boazian anthropology or the pseudo-academic nonsense that is dumbing down. So that's another thread I can't contribute to any more... have fun here!

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 15
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 02:31 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Seánw
quote:

I've also seen many nouns which are listed as both masculine and feminine because they don't show a unique pattern of usage.


I'm not sure about many. As far as I remember, there are only about a dozen such words in the entire Bible.

quote:

In addition to what Laplandian said, I would add that El was available in the singular before the revelations to Abraham. El was already used for the "supreme God" in other areas, so it seems rather a leap to think they'd have Elohim as a holdover from polytheism while El was available (and used). Since they had two (and more) terms for God, the argument that it meant something more significant holds more weight in my mind.


The single form of Elohim is actually Eloah (a cognate of Allah). This form doesn't appear until the final chapters of Deuteronomy, but it is indeed closely related to El.

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 16
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 02:57 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

Peter:
quote:

I remember she was campaigning against the construction of some sea port on the traditional Votian land where some old people still spoke the language in a couple of villages. The resettlement plan would spell the death of the language. I wonder what the current state of affairs is.


Not good, to put it mildly. As an addition to the port, they are also planning to turn the area into a radioactive zone for dumping nuclear waste from all over Europe. The director of the post had commented, with remarkable cynicism, that the Votians "don't exist de jure as a nation".

Some activists protested in St. Petersburg, but with no success whatsoever.

quote:

I'm writing this because this nonsense comes up in the thread that I'm contributing to and so that it's clear that I don't associate myself with any of this.


I didn't notice any ethnic or linguistic elitism is this discussion, except for the questionable dichotomy of "correct" literary forms vs. "wrong" colloquialisms within the same language.

Literacy and education system does affect languages, for better or for worse, as do many other social phenomena and institutions. I think it's reasonable topic for discussion, as long as one doesn't claim that literate and educated groups of people are somehow inherently better than others.

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Laplandian
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Username: Laplandian

Post Number: 17
Registered: 12-2010
Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 03:10 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

Well let me make clear I don't associate myself with Boazian anthropology or the pseudo-academic nonsense that is dumbing down. So that's another thread I can't contribute to any more... have fun here!


I don't associate neither with Boasian/Sapirian anthropology nor with elitism. I would rather describe myself as a Chomskyite with a post-structuralist twist.

(Message edited by Laplandian on December 16, 2010)

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Seánw
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Username: Seánw

Post Number: 944
Registered: 07-2009


Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 04:08 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

I think David's question on leabhar is valid, but I doubt that that is a reason behind the change. Certainly it is plausible that some gender changes came from numerous instances of grammatical confusion which over time became accepted as the gender. I think perhaps David confuses illiteracy with ignorance, or sees a cause for correlation. I think it would be interesting to read into oral culture in this case. I think it is too much of a leap to suppose that illiteracy and lack of formal instruction in grammar equals ignorance. Certainly we can see that the opposite is not true. We have some people around who can read and have studied grammar who are not very bright, and others who may also error in their grammar.

I ndiaidh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin.

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Carmanach
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Username: Carmanach

Post Number: 818
Registered: 04-2009
Posted on Friday, December 17, 2010 - 05:19 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

I think it is too much of a leap to suppose that illiteracy and lack of formal instruction in grammar equals ignorance.



The idea that native speakers cannot speak their own language but have to be schooled in "formal grammar instruction" is a nuisance when carrying out objective linguistic research. The supposition that lack of formal education equals lack of intelligence is a pernicious fiction. It was the ordinary unschooled and often illiterate people of the Gaeltacht who kept the language alive over many centuries when native Irish speakers were denied any power or influence in their own country. Irish had a very rich oral culture; Éamon a' Búrc from Conamara was probably one of the best storytellers of the twentieth century. I'm not sure but I think he received little formal education in his youth.

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Seánw
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Username: Seánw

Post Number: 948
Registered: 07-2009


Posted on Friday, December 17, 2010 - 11:59 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

The idea that native speakers cannot speak their own language but have to be schooled in "formal grammar instruction" is a nuisance when carrying out objective linguistic research.


It is also refuted by research. Ancient languages are just as complex as modern languages even though they relied on oral culture or very little of what we call book learning. Also we would never have developed written language and later formal codes of grammar like Panini's.
The fact that we are reverting to an oral culture, or at least developing into a post-literate society, there may be the assumption that we are also reverting to the level of knowledge we had at 2000 BC. That doesn't follow, though. (But I am a librarian, so keep reading the books!)

I ndiaidh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin.

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The_lilywhites
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Username: The_lilywhites

Post Number: 26
Registered: 10-2010
Posted on Sunday, December 19, 2010 - 01:09 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit PostPrint Post

quote:

There were parts of Ireland where a literate tradition continued all the way through (Muskerry



I suppose thats true, but to put things into perspective that places like Donegal, Galway, Kerry are the parts of Ireland that kept a language tradition that places in Ireland lost over 300 year ago. To me thats the most importnant thing.



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