Re: CHAT: R: Italian Particles

At 4:51 pm +1200 18/4/00, andrew wrote:
>Am 04/17 14:30  Mangiat yscrifef:
>> Weak subjective proclitic forms:
>> they are used in the verbal conjugation, they come before the verb and they
>> are formally a reduplication of the personal pronoun.
>> 1st sing : ego>e'>a _ not so much used anynore
>> 2nd sing : te>ta _ always used
>> 3rd sing : ille>il>el>al
>>                illa>la _ always used
>> 1st and 2nd plur : a < 1st sing _ in the 2nd plur is not so much used
>> anymore
>> 3rd plur : illi>li>i _ it is not anymore used
>
>Hmm.  I'm just wondering if this feature could be adapted for Brithenig
>(Celtic substrata and all that) and how.
Umm - seems to me stretching things a bit to see a connexion between the
use of subject _proclitics_ with the modern Celtic habit (except in Breton
[and modern Carnish?]) of _suffixing_ the subject pronoun to conjugated
verb forms.

Personally, I see no evidence of Celtic substrate in this, only a
development of the pan-Romance use of pre-verbal pro-complements.  As some
have observed, modern colloquial French shows movements in the same
direction.
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At 9:13 pm +0100 16/4/00, yl-ruil wrote:
>Out of interest,
>in the Celtic languages virtually all verbs are prefixed by a particle but
'virtually all' seems a bit of a hyperbole IMHO.

Prefixed particles are used in all, it is true, but their functions and
origins are various.  Breton, which has almost uniquely developed the V2
word order (IIRC 'modern' Cornish - as opposed to Unified & Kemmyn - also
does the same) usually prefixes 'a(z)' or 'e(z)' which are relative
particles, tho IIRC when the verb itself is fronted as the verb-noun, the
main verb being the auxiliary 'to do', there is no prefix.

Without checking in detail, the Gaelic languages prefix negative and
interrogative particles; I don't recall any before positive verbs except
past tenses.

Welsh is rather more complicated in that the literary & spoken forms behave
differently.  For the positive frtms of the synthetic tenses the literary
language has no procltics, but the colloquial language usually
procliticizes 'fe' in the South or 'mi' in the North.  With the verb 'to
be', however, we find the reverse: while the literary language has the
proclitics 'y(r)' in the positive forms, the spoken language drops 'y'
entirely, while 'yr' leaves only 'r-'.  The interrogative proclitic 'a' &
negative 'ni(d)' is normally dropped in the spoken language (leaving only
the required mutations).

But in any case, none of these proclitics are _subject_ proclitics as in
Friulan & the GalloItalic (or is it ItaloGallic ?) dialects.  Maybe,
however, this wasn't implied.

Ray.




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