Re: Just a Little Taste of Judean (Part 2)

On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Steg Belsky wrote:
> > I was thinking, would it be possible for articles to just simply be
> > adopted from a previously-known language that has them?
>
> Nope.  It's possible to borrow the *concept* of articles, but when a
> concept is borrowed, it's always formed by internal resources, i.e.,
> something that already exists in the language is turned into that; in
> the case of definite articles, demonstratives are the most likely
> source.
Why couldn't they?  I'm assuming that these "Judeans" are or were
originally Hebrew speakers who have adopted the Roman language, likely
with a certain Greek and Hebrew adstrate.  If Hebrew has the article, they
certainly wouldn't be borrowing the idea from Latin -- it's already there.
They may develop or be borrowed from Hebrew or Latin.  Compare with
English's borrowing of personal pronouns.  Perhaps not a perfect
comparison, but it doesn't seem to be a whole lot different; since both
had the proper concepts already, it was just a matter of borrowing new
words.

Padraic.