"A" Personal in Spanish (was - Redundant pronouns, Tagalog,etc.)

vardi <vardi@...> wrote:
> Steg Belsky wrote:
[snip]
> >
> > I don't know that much about Arabic, but could the _a personal_ in
> > Spanish be some kind of incomplete influence from Semitic languages?
> > Hebrew has a direct object marker, _et_, so i'd assume Arabic has one
> > too...and i don't see why the Arabic influence on Spanish would be
> > limited to just all those vocabulary words which begin with "al" :)
> >
> > -Stephen (Steg)
> >
>
> Arabic doesn't have an equivalent of the "et" marker (had he known this,
> maybe Ben Gurion would have been a bit more pro-Arab - he hated "et" and
> advocated its virtual elimination from Hebrew, as Steg may well be
> aware).
>
[snip]
>
> But I think the Arabic influence in Spanish goes way beyond "al-" words.
> For example, this business of tagging object suffixes onto verbs (my
> active Spanish isn't that good, but I mean things like "darme,"
> "digame") has always seemed to me to be Semitic influence.
>
>         Shaul
Oh, Arabic influence probably went much more into Spanish than
it seems (not only words, and not only beginning with "al-"). But
I doubt that this clitic attaching is Arabic, because it's present
in all Romance langs.

The real thing is that the personal _a_ can't be equated
to Hebrew _et_ because in Spanish _a_ it's an *indirect* object
marker, which is also used to mark animate direct objects.
This must come from Latin, which I don't know enough about.
Could it be that Latin _ad_ (> Spanish _a_) was used to mark
some animate objects, with a different meaning than the
simple accusative, and then this mark spread to *all* animate
objects?


--Pablo Flores