Re: Terkunan revision (adding a lot of Rhodrese)

From: Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>

> Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
> > I guess _dieses_ has gone out of spontaneous usage, but hasn't
> > it been replaced by _das hier_ vs. _das da_ rather than just
> > merge into _das_?
Gosh, I miss "dieser" und "jener." O tempora, o mores. :)

> Colloquially, 'das da' can be used emphatically even for 'das hier' --
> e.g. when you ask 'Das da oder das da?' for 'This one or that one?'.
> Must sound quite strange to speakers of languages that actually
> distinguish 'this' and 'that' strictly.  Further, without emphasis,
> I'd say 'das' is used most often. But of course, 'das hier' is not
> missing at all, but just not as frequent.  At least, all this is my
> impression.
Seems to be the French approach. But maybe keep your "das hier" equivalent on hand
for those special, when-you-absolutely,-positively-need-it moments.

> Currently, I am struggling whether I really need the distinction
> between 'here' and 'there'.  If 'this' and 'that' is missing...
Again, French "là" does a lot of the work, but for me it's nice that "ici" is there,
waiting in the wings.

> >  >   b) I unified the relative pronoun _ki_ and the
> >  >      interrogative _ke_ into _ke_.
> > I'd expect relative _ke_ and interrogative _ki_.
> > The Romance thing to do would be to have no distinction
> > between relative and interrogative, but have _ki_ for
> > animates/humans and _ke_ for inanimates/nonhumans.
> I considered this, but a single 'ke' won.
At the relative pronoun level, for me, a ki/ke divide falls along nom/acc lines
(French qui/que; Italian chi/che). At the relative pronoun level, your "ke"
looks akin to Spanish which works for both (though in an Isabel Allende novel,
I saw "quien" for "who" in a relative clause). At the interrogative pronoun
level, ki/ke gets you a "who" vs. "what" distinction, with maybe a nom/acc
overlay (qui est-ce qui, qui est-ce que, qu'est-ce qui, qu'est-ce que). That
you can conflate all that into "ke" (plus "that" as a subordinating
conjunction) workably is admirable. "Ke" may be quite the workhorse in this
lang.

Kou

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