Re: articles

[GERMANIC INDEFINITE ARTICLE]
On Monday, January 31, 2005, at 07:44 , Carsten Becker wrote:
[snip]
> Note that in colloquial German, the stem _ein_ [Ai)n] is
> mostly shortened to _'n_ [n=], which nearly sounds like
> English _an_
I believe the Dutch _een_ is also [n=] when used as the indefinite article
and [e:n] when it means "one".

In Afrikaans the indefinite articles is a weakened form of _een_ (one) and
is written _'n_ (The |n| always lower case, even at the beginning of a
sentence) and is generally pronounced [@].
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[SEMITIC DEFINITE ARTICLE]

On Monday, January 31, 2005, at 09:32 , Steg Belsky wrote:
[snip]
> Many Semitic languages have had definite articles, including both
> Biblical and Modern Hebrew and Aramaic, and Classical and Modern
> Arabic.
Yes - IIRC the old Phoenician was very similar to Hebrew & also had a
definite article.

> There were some ancient Semitic languages that seem to have had a
> suffixed /m/ or /n/ definite article.
That I did not know. I understand Classical Arabic, as well as having a
preposited definite article. also gave its nouns the following endings (in
the singular):
	Indefinite  Definite
nom.   -un        -u
acc.   -an        -a
gen.   -in        -n

But there -n shows indefiniteness.

> There are some theories about the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic articles.
>  Some say that they all descend from one original particle */hal/,
> while others explain them differently.
That's the theory I have come across.

>  I remember learning one theory
> that claims that instead of viewing the Arabic definite article as an
> /al/ that sometimes assimilates to dental consonants:
> |albayt| "the house"  vs.  |arrajul| "the man"
> Instead, the basic function of definiteness is carried by the geminated
> consonant! (cf. Hebrew, where the definte article is always
> |ha|+gemination, except with gutturals, and never with an extra /l/).
Interesting - why then would Arabic just geminate the dental consonants
and not others?

> ObConlang:
>
> I decided to use that theory for my Semiticonlang, where definiteness
> is marked by gemination (with sometimes an initial epenthetic /@/) and
> the remains of case-ending vowel + /n/ at the end:
Interesting  :)

BTW I said in a recent email that ancient Egyptian had a definite article.
  I had not remembered entirely correctly. On checking, I find that Old and
Middle Egyptian (Middle Egyptian from end of 20th cent BCE) did not have a
definite article; it is only Late Egyptian (from the latter part of the
16th cent BCE onwards) that had a definite article _p?_ (only consonants
are written) which survived into Coptic where it was pronounced /pi/ or
/pe/.

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
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as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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