Re: Welcome to vaksje (was: Re: New Survey: CelticConlangs (andother lunatic pursuits))

Nik wrote:

>Tristan wrote:
>>  In it's context, it was discussing Dutch, were, I understand based on
>>  the thread, there are different articles (_het_ and _de_) for nouns of
>>  different genders, so you'd have to know the gender before you could use
>>  the article
>
>Actually, that's something I've wondered about.  Do speakers of
>languages with genders not use the article until they're sure of the
>word?  I.e., would a Spanish-speaker never say "Consígueme el ... ¿qué
>es la palabra? ..."?  (I hope I got that right, my Spanish is a bit
>rusty)
My experience has been that the speaker often has, at the
preconscious level, a sense of the word s/he is going for and that
may inform article choice. Once, at the surface level, the real
article kicks in:

Je veux le (perhaps with "ustensile" or just "truc" formed
preconsciously), le, le, le, la fourchette!

It needn't be consistent. One could vacillate as the preconscious
thought finally gels:

Je veux la, la (chose), le, le (truc), la, la (machine), le..., la... le mixer!

A native speaker here at school confirms that this is her experience also.

Kou

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