Re: Marked and Unmarked
| From: | Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, April 9, 2001, 11:41 |
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On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, John Cowan wrote:
> 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.
Ah! Thanks. I confess that "-bund" makes me think of tribes of
languages ready to go to war with each other...OTOH when I first saw the
German term "Ratshaus" I thought it might mean "mousehole" until my
boyfriend corrected me...<slinking away now>
YHL
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