Re: What is an IE language (was: Re: Workshops Review from Yitzik the

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: What is an IE language (was: Re: Workshops Review from Yitzik
the


> En réponse à Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...>:
>
> >
> > Maybe I'm mixed up here, but I seem to find that in Spanish, the word
> > order
> > is the same for questions as for statements, and that intonation makes
> > the
> > difference.
>
> Maybe in Colloquial Spanish, but then it's true of French and English too!
It can be used in English, but the more standard way of making a statement
into a question is to invert (using an auxiliary verb).

- He runs every day.
- Does he run every day?

>   As there are no tone marks in Spanish writing, all of the
> > questions are preceded with another question mark - which would make
> > sense
> > if the language uses the same order and no grammatical/lexical variation
> > for
> > questions.  ¿This does make sense?
> >
>
> Not in normal, even spoken Spanish. Inversion *is* definitely, along with
> intonation, a normal mark of interrogation. "¿Qué dijo el niño?" pregunta
el
> abuelo, not *"¿Qué el niño dijo?". I don't think even in colloquial
language
> you would hear that, and Spanish is *not a V2 language ;))) .
With an interrogative pronoun (que, quien, quanto, qual, etc.) it's like you
say, but if I have a statement, changing it into a question (in my
experience) has been simply a matter of intonation.

- Tienes el libro.
- ¿Tienes el libro?

(I'm kind of guessing at Spanish spelling, as I've never really used it in
writing.  All my experience at learning it has been through talking to
people, so it's pretty comical.)

Replies