Re: Icelandic umlauts.

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:

> Thomas R Wier wrote:
>
> [about ablaut]
>
> >I've also seen "Lautverschiebung" (presumably what Oskar is translating),
> >but only in horribly technical works.
>
> No, I was translating from the Icelandic term "hljóðskipti"
> ("hljoodskipti"). [...] Icelandic has native terms in all sciences, and
> usually we're most familiar with them.
Ah, yes. Loan-translation like this is a fascinating subject.  One language I
studied, Onandaga, an Iroquoian language, has:

odítshænó:h                                    "iced tea"
(y)o-di-tshR-no-h
NEUT-tea-NOM-be.cold-STAT

The ways languages cope with changing cultural and technological
situations is interesting generally.  In Onandaga, 'telephone' is:

udwenudá:tha?
lit., 'they put their words in it'

> If I understand right,
>
> demonstrative pronoun = this/that (aabendingarfornafn)
> relative pronoun = who/which/that (tilviisunarfornafn)
> subordinate clause = who/which/that ... (tilviisunarsetning)
I don't know Icelandic, but your glosses sound right.

> Others I don't know:
>
> predicate = ? (?sagnfylling?)
The predicate is the part of the sentence forming the verb phrase.

> P.S. Are you related to Danny Wier?
Well, actually that's an interesting question.  The short answer is 'No', but just
yesterday I was perusing the 'Handbook of Texas' looking to see if two of my
ancestors, Thomas Hudson Barron and Robert W. Wier, were mentioned*.
In passing found some other Wiers associated with East Texas there, who
had also left Mississippi after the War Between the States but I did not
recognize them as anyone I'd heard about related to me.  So, Danny, do
any of these people strike you as familiar? If so, we might be (distantly)
related, afterall.

<http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/web_evaluate?query=Wier&dataset=tsha.dst>

*(They are: my great-great-great-grandfather,
<http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/BB/fbatq.html>
and my great-great-uncle,
<http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/WW/hlw34.html>),

======================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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