Re: Article wierdness

--- John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

> This is why I keep arguing that the French
> "definite" article isn't
> really definite any more; it's been bleached of most
> of its definiteness
> and serves mostly as the default determiner, the one
> that applies when
> there is no specific reason to use anything else.
Mmmmhhh (expressing dubitativeness).

Suppose the incipit of a novel is: "Un chat sauta sur
la table." (A cat jumped onto the table). This makes
the reader already kind of familiar with "the" table,
while "un" chat is something yet unknown, foreign.

The author might have written : "Un chat sauta sur une
table". This would look rather weird for the beginning
of a novel, because the reader looks at both of the
items "cat" and "table" from the outside, he doesn't
feel really concerned. The whole thing seems far away:
somewhere, some cat jumped onto some table. Well, not
very exciting, is it ?

"Le chat sauta sur une table" is hardly better.
Nothing interesting in that table, just some table,
any table. Boring too.

"Le chat sauta sur la table". Ah, in that case, the
reader is thrown right into the story, just like he
already knew both the cat and the table. He just sees
the cat and the table in front of him. A writer would
probably prefer this style, except for special
purposes (choice 1 also could be a possibility).

So the choice between "a" or "the", at least in an
incipit, is something very important; and "the" is
much more marked, and expressive, that "a", in English
like in French, I guess.

> English though is notable for its insistence on
> redundant possessive
> determiners:  "He put his hands in his pockets" is
> the only idiomatic
> way of saying that, even though it's obvious that
> people normally
> put their own hands in their own pockets.
I know some exceptions. For ex the Finance Minister.

> I was reading Rickard's _History of the French
> Language_, and it
> struck me forcibly how Old French is essentially
> Modern English with
> Romance words; the word order feels very natural in
> English, and
> even such contrasts as "mange pain" vs. "mange du
> pain" match English
> "eat bread" vs "eat of the bread" exactly; that is,
> the last (which
> is the only form in ModF) is used only when some
> specific bread
> has already been mentioned.
>
??? To me, "mange du pain" just expresses a partitive.
If you say "mange du pain" to a child sitting at a
table, it just means that some bread is supposed to be
around, and that the child is not supposed to eat the
whole of it. No need that bread has be mentioned
before.

> Rickard points out that learning OF requires first
> forgetting ModF;
> in particular, masculine nouns take -s in the
> singular and drop it
> in the plural.
??? I suppose it depends of what noun, and probably
what function inside the sentence (subject, direct or
indirect object). In my edition of "Lancelot du Lac"
(1225), anyway, I see many masculine plurals in -s [or
-z] (and also many singulars, true).
Ex:
"Ha ! sire, fait li vallez [singular], por Deu merci,
mout est ores miauz que ge muire que uns des prisiez
chevaliers [plural] de vostre ostel"
(Ah, Seigneur, dit le valet, pour l'amour de Dieu,
pardonnez-moi. Mieux vaut que je meure plutot que l'un
des chevaliers honore's de votre hotel).

Another sentence:
"Je ne puis estre delivree se par le chevalier
[singular] non que li rois [singular] laisa aler"
(Je ne peux etre delivre'e que par le chevalier que le
roi a laisse' partir)

Anyway, I guess that the language was far from
strictly codified then, and that there were lots of
concurrent dialects.



=====
Philippe Caquant


Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intellegor illis (Ovidius).

Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo (Horatius).

Interdum stultus opportune loquitur (Henry Fielding).

Scire leges non hoc est verba earum tenere, sed vim ac potestatem (Somebody).

Melius est ut scandalum oriatur, quam ut veritas relinquatur (Somebody else).

Ceterum censeo *vi* esse oblitterandum (Me).


		
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