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Re: Person distinctions in languages?

From:J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...>
Date:Friday, February 4, 2005, 11:28
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 00:59:11 +0100, Steven Williams <feurieaux@...> wrote:

> --- "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...> schrieb:
...
>> which would rather use ['gRy:s@] or, less northern, >> ['g_0Ry:s@] (which I believe is completely >> equivalent to ['kRy:s@]). > >Yeah, the pronunciation I learned as a foreigner is >something like [gRy:s@]. Am I right to interpret the >[r] phonetically as an alveolar tap or trill, rather >than the typical German uvular approximant?
Exactly. It's also used in Swiss standard German ['kry:s:e].
>> Note that the [@] in the ending is totally unrelated >> to the [@] in the diphthong and that the dialectal >> consonant length is distinctive (e.g. /pIs/ 'be!' >> or 'until' vs. /pIs:/ 'bite'). > >Whoa, the imperative of 'sein' in that dialect is not >'sei(en Sie)'? How does that work out historically? >Did German historically have more than one rootword >for 'be', like Old English, like maybe a stem that >gave the modern /sein/, /sind/, /sei/, /seien/, /seid/ >and so on, and another that gave the /bin/, /bist/? > >I know PIE had something like *hes, *wes and *bhu for >'be' in various meanings; does anyone know how they >transmitted to the Germanic languages, esp. German and >English?
The distribution of the different forms on the three roots varies between the Germanic languages (included within German dialects) (I hope there are no major mistakes): *hes: English: is (3s), am (1s) German: ist (3s), sind (pl), sein (inf), sei! Swiss German: isch (3s), sy (pl), sy (inf), gsy (pp) (|y| is /i/) *wes: English: was (pret s), were (pret pl) German: war (pret), gewesen (pp), (Wesen 'being') Swiss German: wär (pret coni), (Wäse 'being') *bhu: English: be (inf), be!, been (pp) German: bin (1s) Swiss German: bi (1s), bis! (|b| is /p/) The alternation of s and r is called rhotacism. The original consonant was s. German _war, warst_ is indeed a case of generalization. I don't know why the s is preserved in _(ge)wesen_, but I guess there must be an explanation. kry@s: j. 'mach' wust

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Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>