Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:10:06 +1100, Tristan McLeay
<conlang@...> wrote:
> On 20 Jan 2005, at 5.28 pm, Philip Newton wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:45:56 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> > <conlang@...> wrote:
> >> I think also that normally when there's
> >> a strong nom./acc. distinction, the pronoun-in-isolation form is the
> >> nominative, whereas in English you'd use the so-called object-form
> >> (-'Who would?' -'Me!').
> >
> > Well... I wouldn't.
>
> It wasn't for no reason I used that example.
I suppose so. I was merely taking exception with your use of 'you',
which seemed to imply 'all native English speakers'.

> >  But my father subscribed to a fairly prescriptive
> > view of English grammar, and this influenced the way I speak. For
> > example, I try to keep my pronoun cases "correct" (and to use "whom"
> > when appropriate, etc.).
>
> Hey, I always use 'whom' when it's appropriate... (It's just that I
> subscribe to the view that it's never appropriate to use it :)
>
> (But are you a native speaker of both German and English?
Indeed.

My father is English, and my mother was German; I was born and raised
in Germany.

Both of my parents spoke only English to me until I was about three;
from then on, my mother started speaking German to me while my father
continued speaking English.

My father's English is, I believe, some sort of area-neutral "upper
middle class" English, which he passed on to me; my English later
became influenced by American accents at school (International School
Hamburg -- an English-speaking school with children from all over the
world; most of those who had English as a second language spoke some
variety of American): partly because my English accent was initially
made fun of and partly simply from being around the other accents for
so long. Since leaving school I've regained my British accent a
little; I think "diglossia" is a label that applies here since I can
still speak either, depending on whom I'm talking to :)

My German is pretty standard northern German colloquial, I'd say: that
is, comfortably close to standard German with some regionalisms,
especially in pronunciation (most notably, final /g/ [k] turns into
/x/ [C] ~ [X]). However, my German is also a bit conservative
grammatically since my father was of the opinion "if you must speak
German, at least speak it correctly" (tongue in cheek about the
desirability of speaking German, but he did like to see English and
German spoken "properly" -- which is probably also one reason why he's
against the recent spelling reform since he considers parts of it
illogical, even indefensibly so).

> I spose that explains your surname...)
Yes: from my English father. I've got a British pasport, too, though
I'm not able to pass on my nationality to my children; my daughter is
German.

> On 20 Jan 2005, at 8.41 pm, Steg Belsky wrote:
>
> > On Jan 20, 2005, at 6:35 AM, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> >> occur~occurrence no longer have similar stressed vowels
> >
> > The stressed vowel in "occur" and "occurance" in my dialect are both
> > the same vowel, /@`/~/r\=/.
>
> Oh damn, and I sat for at least two minutes trying to come up with what
> I hope was a clear and unambiguous example. If you want to know what I
> say, and thus how I came up with them being different, it's /2:/ and
> /a.r/.
And for me, it's something along the lines of [3:] and [Vr]. I think.
(I'm not entirely sure where my vowels are.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!