Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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

From:Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>
Date:Monday, April 12, 1999, 3:26
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.