Re: Marked and Unmarked
| From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, April 8, 2001, 20:16 |
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Yoon Ha Lee scripsit:
> Er...BTW...what's a Sprachbund? Sort of a linguistic isocline?
In essence, yes. We invoke the term when there are a bunch of nearby languages
that share some common features but aren't related by common descent.
For example, Bulgarian and Romanian but have postposed definite articles,
although Romanian's relatives used preposed articles and Bulgarian's don't
have any articles at all.
The Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai (and related langs) use of tones also constitute
a Sprachbund.
--
John Cowan cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter
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