Re: Article wierdness

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


> Well, narration is not interlocution.  It's a
> special case: in ordinary
> life, people don't just come up to you and start to
> talk about some
> cat and some table without any previous context.
Women often do. After a few minutes, you have to tell
them: now, what the hell are you talking about ? and
then, usually, they get angry that you're so obtuse
:-)


> > ??? 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.
>
> True for Modern French, but in Old French things
> were different (sorry
> if it wasn't clear what contrast I was drawing
> before).  Old French used
> "mange pain" for this meaning, and "mange du pain"
> only when "the bread"
> was clearly definite.
Ah, ok. After all, "du" is supposed to be a
contraction or "de le", so it would make sense.

We also have an expression: "je ne mange pas de ce
pain-là" (I don't eat of that bread), meaning, I don't
want to get involved into some [not very clear]
business.



=====
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).


	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail