Re: Odd construct

Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>Matt Pearson skrev:
>
>>If you mean the semantically empty "it" found in sentences like "It is
>>raining" or "It seems that John is sick", then yes.  Both are referred to
>>as expletives.  In fact there are some languages (Swedish, I think) where
>>a
>>single element corresponds to both expletive "it" and expletive "there".
>
>Yup. We have "det" for both of those:
[snip examples]
>"Det" is used for a bunch of stuff. I had a teacher once who
>had done some research on that and he came up with like 17
>different uses of "det".
>
>And "det" is pronounced [de:t] in careful speech, but
>normally [de(:)] if anyone was wondering. :)
That is, when it's not cliticized (if that's a word) to a [-t] that attaches
to the preceeding word. Eg _slå't_ "hit it" (imperative), "se på't_ "look at
it".

Swedish is a bit fond of these reduced "affixal" pronouns. One of them is
quite funny, namely _-na_ "her" (3rd sg female oblique personal pronoun) -
the corresponding independent pronoun is the less than very similar _henne_.
Supposedly, the _-na_ is from an old accusative _hana_.

                                                    Andreas

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

Reply