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Re: "A" Personal in Spanish (was - Redundant pronouns, Tagalog, etc.)

From:vardi <vardi@...>
Date:Tuesday, February 16, 1999, 13:05
Steg Belsky wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Feb 1999 22:50:28 -0300 Pablo Flores <fflores@...> > writes: > >BTW, why, could it be, is there a difference between animate and > >inanimate > >objects in Spanish? Does anybody know? The "a" for animate direct > >objects > >is a bother when there's also a dative object (though word order and > >intonation differentiate them). > > > >--Pablo Flores > > > > I don't know that much about Arabic, but could the _a personal_ in > Spanish be some kind of incomplete influence from Semitic languages? > Hebrew has a direct object marker, _et_, so i'd assume Arabic has one > too...and i don't see why the Arabic influence on Spanish would be > limited to just all those vocabulary words which begin with "al" :) > > -Stephen (Steg) >
Arabic doesn't have an equivalent of the "et" marker (had he known this, maybe Ben Gurion would have been a bit more pro-Arab - he hated "et" and advocated its virtual elimination from Hebrew, as Steg may well be aware). Classical Arabic has a triple-case and definite/indefinite marking system that makes an "et"-type marker unnecessary, while spoken Arabic can't be bothered with such pedantries. But I think the Arabic influence in Spanish goes way beyond "al-" words. For example, this business of tagging object suffixes onto verbs (my active Spanish isn't that good, but I mean things like "darme," "digame") has always seemed to me to be Semitic influence. Shaul