Re: Adjectives, Particles, and This ( etc ), and Conjunctions...

On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 11:53:32AM +0100, Pavel A. da Mek wrote:
[snip]
> BTW, how it should be from etymologic point of view? We have these pronouns
> and articles:
> - Eng. this
> - PIE tod, Eng. that, Germ. das, Sl. to
> - Greek _hode'_
IIRC, _ho'de_ is a concatenation of the definite article _ho_ and the
particle _de_ (sorry, i must've mis-accented ho'de as hode' in my previous
post). The particle _de_ is translated "indeed" in most contexts, but I do
not know what its original meaning might've been. Now I *do* know that the
definite article used to be a pronoun, so a wild guess on my part would be
that ho'de used to mean "he/she/it indeed" and came to mean "this one
here". But this is just speculation, of course. Someone who's more clued
than I am should step up and clarify :-)

[snip list of demonstratives]

If I may add also:
Mandarin:       tze4ke (this one), na4ke (that one), or simply, tze4
                (this) and na4 (that).
Hokkien:        tzi1lei1 (this one), hi1lei1 (that one). AFAIK, there
                isn't a monosyllabic version of these like Mandarin does.
Malay:          ini (this), itu (that).

It seems that most languages have only two distictions. Three-way
distinctions such as in Greek seem to be more rare. Are there any natlangs
with only one demonstrative? Just curious :-)


[snip]
> Why "nothing in common"? Compare:
>
> I am going to the bedroom. (preposition)
> I am going to sleep. (particle)
>
> The function of "to" is essentially equal in both cases. The infinive with
> "to" IMHO has the same meaning as dative (allative, illative) of abstract
> noun derived from verb.
Well, I don't think "to" is equivalent in these two cases. The first case
functions as a preposition, but the second is almost like an inflectional
particle bound to the verb -- you can't dissect it from the verb and still
retain the infinitive meaning. Just IMHO...

[snip]
> >>What uses do particles have?
> >
> >Many and various - and the pesky things have a habit of being among the
> >most useful little words in any language  :)
>
> Essentially, particles are prefixes that are not fixed.
In (Attic) Greek, particles are prefixes *and* suffixes *and* a host of
other things as well. :-) For example, you have prefixes/prepositions such
as para-, anti-, amphi-, peri-, etc., these can attach to verbs as prefix
or can be stand-alone as prepositions. Then you have suffixing particles
such as the indefinite particle _ti_ which sometimes can be used as an
indefinite article (Greek doesn't formally have indefinite articles) --
this is suffixed to the word it modifies, so e.g.:
        he: hodo's      the road
        hodo's ti       some road (or "a road")

And then, you have the strange post-positive beasts like "men" and "de"
(correlatives, usually translated as "on the one hand" and "on the other
hand"), and "gar" (therefore). They are post-positive because they don't
like to appear as the first word in a sentence (although they can), and
they like to appear after the word(s) they modify. E.g., to say something
like "therefore the old woman escaped":
1)      he  gar       grau^s    e'phugen.
        the therefore old_woman escaped.
OR,
2)      he  grau^s    gar       e'phugen.
        the old_woman therefore escaped.

Although (2) seems more intuitive, (1) appears to be more common, in spite
of the fact that the post-positive particle "gar" has intruded itself
between the article "he" and the noun "grau^s" :-)


T

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