Re: Da Mätz se Basa: Syntax

Hi!

René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...> writes:
>...
> > This happened in Dutch, which
> > also sounds quite funny for most Germans, I suppose.
>
> Really? I never heard that Dutch sounds funny to Germans.. I'll ask some
> Germans I know :) ...
:-)  I'm interested in their response.

> > E.g. 'milieuverpesting' for 'Umweltverschmutzung'.  Or
> > 'afvoerbuisontstopper' for 'Abflußreiniger'.
>
> I'd say that 'gootsteenontstopper' is more common.
Ah, ok.  I read the former word on a bottle of just that stuff.  So my
sampling might not at all be good. :-)

> And 'milieuverontreiniging' ('milieuverpesting' is not in my
Oops!  Were did I find that, then?  Even google only finds some 10 hits.

> You could try the links listed at http://www.dieknoop.co.za/#luister .
> I haven't tried these because I'm in Linux now, and I don't think I've
> got a way to play mms:// links and wma-files.
Same here.  Hmm.

> >>... You state that in De Mätz se Basa, 'nich nä' is fine.
>
> *Da* Mätz se Basa. Sorry.
I do that regularly, too, actually... :-)

>...
> I think the difference is illustrated by the following examples:
>
> 'n Voël kan vlieg, maar 'n koei nie.
> A bird can fly, but a cow cannot.
>
> Ek het 'n voël gesien, maar nie 'n koei nie.
> I've seen a bird, but not a cow.
>
> I guess this means that putting "nich nä" at the end of the sentence
> introduces ambiguity. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, though.
Well, but in De^Ha Mätz se Basa, the first one would put the 'nich' just
before 'nä' and in the second, puts it in front of 'a cow'.

My question was why you would regard an elided constituent (in this
case the verb) special so that you asked whether then, 'nich nä' would
not be allowed.  I see nothing special -- and I was thinking that a
simple rule in Afrikaans deletes any two adjacent 'nie' into just one.
(Adjacent 'nä's in my language *do* collapse.)  Perhaps I missed your
point and am overseeing a problem.  Hmm.

**Henrik

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