Re: Artyom Kouzminykh: Answers & proposal

Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>
> > Date:         Mon, 23 Aug 1999 11:09:34 +0200
> > From: Christophe Grandsire <grandsir@...>
>
> >         I wonder if it is true. This makes perfect sense for
> > English, but it is something impossible for French for example:
> > "J'ai cuit de la viande" vs. "J'ai de la viande cuite". But maybe at
> > an earlier stage French had the adjective before the noun (and
> > before its article).
>
> Well, I cheated. The 'have'-construction did not arise in any of the
> modern European languages, but sometime back in Proto-Romance and
> Common Germanic times, or perhaps a bit later. (Neither family had
> strict word order or mandatory articles back then). It just happens to
> work in Modern English too.
>
> And it did used to have the participle agreeing with the object noun
> phrase in gender and number, unlike the periphrastic perfect with 'is'
> where it agreed with the subject. (Agreement getting lost as part of
> grammaticalization is expected --- but what may be interesting is that
> the 'have'-form generally lost it much earlier than the 'is'-form).
>
        We still have it in French, but only when the object takes place before
the verb, when it's a personal object pronoun for example, or when it's
a relative pronoun. I think in older times agreement was more important
(I can't check it by now, but I will).

> Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)
--
        Christophe Grandsire

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