Re: No pronoun, no article

On Tuesday, October 21, 2003, at 12:53 , Doug Dee wrote:

> In a message dated 10/20/2003 3:49:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> ray.brown@FREEUK.COM (responding to me) writes:
>
>
>>> According to Alan Libert in his book _Mixed Artificial Languages_,
>>> Volapuk
>>> had both a definite article ("et") and an indefinite article ("un").
>
>> I don't know where Alan Limbert got that info from.  Maybe it's the
>> revised
>> Volapük of Arie de Jong; but it ain't Schleyer's Volapük.
>
>
> Thank you for that information.
>
> Libert gives as his source for this remark _Histoire de la langue
> universelle_ (1903) and   _Les nouvelles langues internationale_
> (1907/1979), both by L.
> Couturat and L. Leau.
>
> L&C could have been mistaken, or it could be, as you suggest, a question
> of
> different versions of Volapuk.
There are AFAIK only two significant versions of Volapük: the original
form designed
by Johann Martin Schleyer in 1879 and the reformed version of Arie de Jong
from some
time in the 1930s.  At the time _Histoire de la langue universelle_
Schleyer was still
alive (he died in 1912).

 From the little information I have about 'Reformed Volapük' I find no
reference to
the introduction of articles; tho that doesn't mean to say it was not done.

> Since I don't know any Volapuk myself, I cannot shed any further light on
> the
> question.
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.

Ray
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