12 SAE features
| From: | <morphemeaddict@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, April 12, 2008, 5:53 |
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Average_European :
According to <A
HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Martin_Haspelmath&action=edit&redlink=1">Martin
Haspelmath</A> (2001), the SAE languages form a <A
HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachbund">sprachbund</A>
characterized by the following features:
1. definite and indefinite articles (e.g. English the vs. a);
2. postnominal relative clauses with inflected, resumptive relative pronouns
(e.g. English who vs. whom);
3. a possessive perfect formed with 'have' plus a passive participle (e.g.
English I have said);
4. a preponderance of generalizing predicates to encode experiencers;
5. a passive construction formed with a passive participle plus an
intransitive copula-like verb (e.g. English I am known);
6. a prominence of anticausatives in inchoative-causative pairs;
7. dative external possessors;
8. verbal negation with a negative indefinite;
9. particle comparatives in comparisons of inequality;
10. equative constructions based on adverbial-relative clause structures;
11. subject person affixes as strict agreement markers;
12. differentiation between intensifiers and reflexive pronouns.
What is a "possessive perfect" as in #3?
stevo </HTML>