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Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

From:And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
Date:Thursday, February 27, 2003, 3:21
John:
> Joe scripsit: > > > He's right there. I got confused by my(Yorkshire) grandfather saying > > [In?l&v], 'in the lav' or 'in the toilet > > You know, this makes me wonder if "the" is actually the underlying > morpheme. In the conventional written form of Yorkshire dialect, this is > written "in t'lav", as if /T/ > /t/. But in fact the /t/ is realized as > [?], suggesting that it is underlyingly at the end of a syllable > > Perhaps what we have here is a survival of the Gmc *neuter* demonstrative, > generalized to all nouns, which surfaces as "it" in Frisian, "het" in > Dutch, and (perhaps more relevantly, given the history of Yorkshire as > part of the Danelaw) "et/ett" in Scandinavian languages. In that case, > "in 't lav" would be a better written form. Normative OE is Southern > and doesn't show this form with neuter nouns: instead we see 'tha:' > the > > Any takers?
I've no idea, but I don't find a derivation from _the_ particularly odd. D > T > t > ? or D > d > t > ? are both natural chains of development. Note, btw, that _to_ also is realized as [?] in these dialects, which is counterevidence to your notion that article [?] could not have originated in a syllable onset. --And.