Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: No pronoun, no article

From:Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 2:00
In a message dated 10/21/2003 2:41:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
ray.brown@FREEUK.COM writes:


>It's curious that Couturat & Leau say this about Volapük's articles. I >wonder if any >other conlanger more light on this mystery. It's clear they were not >there in >Schleyer's original version.
It's all a puzzle to me. Judging from Libert's book, it appears that Libert believes that C&L are describing the original version of Volapuk, with articles, and that an article-less version was later approved at a Volapuk Congress in 1887, and this article-less version was described by C.E. Sprague in 1888 in _The Hand-Book of Volapuk_. Either Libert or C&L may be confused about which version is which. Libert says that C&L say the articles aren't much used. (Or at least I think that's what they say; Libert quotes them in untranslated French). I might speculate that perhaps Volapuk didn't actually have articles, but perhaps did have a demonstrative "et" and a numeral "un," and perhaps either Schleyer or some later writer said that these could be pressed into service as articles if one really felt the need in a literal translation, and maybe this concession has somehow mutated into the statement that "Volapuk has articles" as authors quote one another over the years. But I'm just guessing. Doug

Reply

Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>Volapük's 'articles' (was: No pronoun, no article)