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Re: "Tagalog, it's got a Trigger System," She Said (was; QUESTION-New project)

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Tuesday, February 16, 1999, 4:08
On Mon, 15 Feb 1999 15:46:06 -0500 Tim Smith <timsmith@...>
writes:
>At 04:00 AM 2/15/99 -0500, Steg Belsky wrote: >>Actually, i just realized... >>Rokbeigalmki works exactly the same way! >>Because of the way verbs are formed/conjugated, when you say: >>_sha:hhya ozu-mwe_ >>to mean "Shaya went" what you're literally saying is: >>"Shaya, he went" >>....weird.... >>-Stephen (Steg)
>Actually, in a sense, a huge number of languages work that way: all >the >languages in which subject pronouns are optional because they're >redundant >(the pronoun being implicit in the subject agreement marking on the >verb), >like Spanish and Italian. Like in Latin, if you say "Brutus Caesarem >interfecit" ("Brutus killed Caesar"), you're literally saying "Brutus, >he >killed Caesar", because the "he" is implicit in the _-t_ suffix on the >verb >(which marks third-person-singular subject agreement). (Thus it's >perfectly >grammatical and normal to say simply "Caesarem interfecit" ("he/she >killed >Caesar) if it's clear from the context who the killer was.)
Rokbeigalmki is even more redundant than that, from the point of view of the actual word, since the subject-tense complexes (_ozu_ in the above example) actually are made of the pronoun (oz, "he") plus a vowel signifying tense (u, "past"). So not just because of the verb's form, like in Latin or Spanish, Rokbeigalmki actually uses the pronoun itself as a vital part of the conjugation. I think that's what you're talking about below, right? -Stephen (Steg)
>Furthermore, it seems clear from recent work on grammaticalization >that >subject agreement markers originate as exactly the sort of "redundant" >subject pronouns that you're talking about. The pronoun starts out >being >used only when there's no noun subject, as in "Standard" English; then >it >becomes mandatory even with a noun subject (as in Rokbeigalmki and in >the >dialect of English that you're talking about); then it becomes >phonologically attached to the verb, first as a clitic and finally as >an >affix. (The line between "clitic" and "affix" is very fuzzy.) >Also, I think this phenomenon of mandatory subject pronouns is found >in many >regional and ethnic varieties of English, not just yours. I suspect >that >this will eventually become part of the standard language, and that >sometime >centuries or millennia in the future, verbs in whatever language(s) >is/are >descended from English will have subject agreement prefixes that are >recognizably derived from these subject pronouns. > >- Tim > >------------------------------------------------- >Tim Smith >timsmith@global2000.net
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