Re: About Romance natlangs and conlangs (Re: ) (LONG)

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> "Grandsire, C.A." wrote:
> >         Future and simple past have five different forms out of 6 persons. Do
> > you call that "barely"? :)
>
> Really?  Well, I'm not much of a French expert, my apologies.
>
        I just wanted to make a little fun at your expense. Sorry about that.
For most of the tenses used in Spoken French, you're right.

> >         nous aimons /nuzEmO~/: we love
> >         If you take only the verb, there are only three forms /Em/, /EmO~/ and
> > /Eme/, but in writing you have five different forms. And with the
> > subject clitic pronouns, all forms are different.
>
> Isn't it common in French to use _on_ in the place of _nous_, making it
> _on aime_, or am I totally mistaken here?
>
        It is very common yes, but (at least in my dialect) the form 'nous'
hasn't yet disappeared. In fact I think that the difference on/nous is
the same as tu/vous, i.e. informal vs. formal. Strange isn't it? And
don't forget the 'on' used as 2nd person very informal by adults when
they speak to a small child. It's supposed to be affective and tender
but is in fact very irritating (you know, it is mostly used by that kind
of people who pretend to know everything about children but never raised
one nor had one nearer than 20 meters from them!).

> >         Maybe that's a manifestation of the fact that this tense is still seen
> > as compounded. Is 'a' the 3rd person present of "to have" in Portuguese?
> > It seems very likely to me.
>
> Yep.  The same phenomenon occured in all the Romance languages at an
> earlier stage, but has died out in most (all?) of the others.
>
        I know of it in French, Spanish and Italian. And I think in Romanian
the future is made by the equivalent of the verb "to want" (just like
'will' in English). But I'm not sure of it.

--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
        Prof. Holstlaan 4
        5656 AA Eindhoven
        The Netherlands

        Phone:  +31-40-27-45006
        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com