Re: articles

Quoting Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...>:


> (1) _'n_ appended to a verb can also mean "ihn" (him) in my
> ideolect (_'ne_ in the regional dialect) or also "denn"
>  ... but this is another story.
Cool! I can't recall hearing this in German, but my Swedish lect does, on the
surface, the same thing; it suffixes _-'_ to a verb for "him". It's
historically from acc _han_ "him", but the corresponding non-cliticized form
synchronically is _honom_, originally dative. Similarly, _-na_ "her" goes back
to an old accusative _hana_, and looks unconnected to the modern independent
accusative/dative _henne_.

The enclitic _-n_ can also mean "it" as object, but whether this is a
generalization of _han_ for inanimates back in the days when Swedish had a
German-style three-gender system, or connects to _den_ "it", I do not know. For
neuters, the form is _-t_ or _-et_.

                                                         Andreas

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