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

At 15:05 16/02/99 +0200, you wrote:
>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
>
>
        I'm not so sure of that, we have the same thing in French when the verb is
in the imperative:

French: Dis-moi = Spanish: Dime = English: Tell me.

And I think Italian has it too. The only originality of Spanish is to
suffix pronouns even with the infinitive. I don't think of it as a Semitic
influence but merely as the evolution of Romance languages (does not
Portuguese have it too?).


                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html