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

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