Re: Aluric So Far

Raymond A. Brown wrote:
 =

> >Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> >> Does any other natlang or
> >> conlang use such a feature? I'm interested in knowing it.
Doesn't Italian do something similar with "ci" and "ne"?

> However, unlike 'je', 'te', 'la', 'lui' etc., they do not substitute fo=
r
> nouns or noun phrases; as Christophe says, 'y' replaces _phrases_ begin=
ning
> with '=E0' and 'en' replaces phrases beginning with 'de'.  In the older=
> terminology that I was brought up with such phrases are called "adverbi=
al
> phrases" because the phrase acts as an adverb, but many now-a-days call=
> them "prepositional phrases" because the begin with a preposition.  I d=
on't
> know what the latter linguists, thereform, term 'y' and 'en', but I'd c=
all
> them pro-adverbs - or more strictly, maybe, adverbial pro-complements.
I can deal with this for sentences like "J'y vais" ("y" replacing
something like "a` la piscine") or "J'en sors" ("en" replacing something
like "de la bibilothe`que"), but isn't the stickiness in terminology
caused by the fact that "de" does double duty as the partitive marker?

Je veux du cafe' =3D> J'en veux (I want *some*. [which in the English
dictionary, at least, is termed an indefinite pronoun]).

French speakers, do you consider "du cafe'" as a prepositional phrase
(or adverbial phrase) in this instance?

Less convincingly, perhaps, what about verbal expressions like:

avoir besoin de
obe'ir a`
se souvenir de

While in a sentence like "Je me souviens de mon se'jour a` Nice." I
would consider "de..." a prepositional phrase, it is so intimately
linked to the verb, I don't feel this is being used adverbially (as an
English speaker, I'd parse "se'jour" as the object of "se souvenir de").
So the "en" in "Je m'en souviens." feels more like a (special) pronoun
here. That there is a relative pronoun that covers similar turf:

le se'jour *dont* je me souviens (not *que je me souviens)

seems to me to indicate that "en" has a pronounish function in these
types of expressions. So yes, not pronouns in the strictest sense, and
yes, they have adverbial functions, but I think "pro-adverbs" or
"adverbial pro-complements" are too limiting to describe all that these
words can do.

Equivocally,

Kou