Re: Standard Average European (was: case system)

Hallo!

On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:08:40 +1000, Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On 11/04/08 22:48:34, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> > > And, does anyone have any information on what the areal features of
> > these
> > > languages are?
> >
> > As usual, Wikipedia is your friend:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Average_European
> >
> > Besides the 12 features listed therein, there are several other
> > features common to the SAE language, but less characteristic
> > because they are frequently found elsewhere, such as SVO order,
> > accusative alignment, moderately synthetic predominantly suffixing
> > morphology, absence of a phonemic velar/uvular opposition and
> > absence of non-pulmonic consonants.
>
> Now: I thought I had a pretty good understanding of linguistic
> terminology and could understand most things you through at me, if
> necessary having to think a little first. And maybe I'm just tired
> right now, but most of the unillustrated items on the Wikipedia article
> are just gibberish to me. Could someone please explain them and their
> significance?
Indeed, I don't understand all of them either, and the whole thing
is way too technical for a Wikipedia article (yes, I am critical of
my own work - the "Standard Average European as a sprachbund" section
is mostly done by me, though someone else has made a handful of
additions), and rewriting it is definitely on my to-do list.

I simply copied the list from Haspelmath's article; most of them need
explanations, but some of them are too obscure for me to explain them
by myself.  I think I will simply remove the items I don't understand
from the list, and make it clearer that Germanic and Romance are much
more "SAE" than the others.

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