Re: Question about Questions

En réponse à tous,

Regarding /ti:/ from a-t-il, I remember seeing the information and
remembering it, but that's all. It must have been about 20 years ago. It's
odd the way some (otherwise useless) things stick in the mind. In the
first-ever linguistics lecture I attended, in late 1977, I remember being
impressed by the word uaqididezqeshizhifateqim. I can remember the analysis
was u-a-qi-di-dez-qe-shi-zhi-fa-te-q-im, but can't remember what it meant!
It was a caucasian language, possibly Kabardian, but that's all I can
remember about it. It'd be great if there was a 'Caucasist' out there who
could translate it for me, and put me out of my misery!

Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: Question about Questions


> En réponse à Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>:
>
> > I read somewhere in a linguistics book a few years back how the French
> > a-t-il? construction was observed to be reinterpreted as phonetically
> > /ti:/
> > and syntactically [question particle], which kind of ties in with the
> > "should've - should of" debate fiercely raging ;-) elsewhere!
>
> I wonder what dialect of French you're talking about. In French, there is
> indeed a construction which is more and more analysed as a question
particle:
> it's 'est-ce que' (pronounced /Esk/ or /Esk@/) which appears at the
beginning
> of questions or after the interrogative word which always appears at the
> beginning of sentences:
>
> Est-ce qu'il va venir ? /Eskilvav'nir/: is he going to come?
> Où est-ce qu'il est ? /u.Eski'lE/: where is he?
>
> Christophe.
>
> http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr