Re: THEORY: French and polypersonalism (was: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism)

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:25:27 -0500, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:

...
>but if the object is a noun or a verb that prefix will not be there
>
>I love my cat=[ZEmo~SA] and not [ZlEmo~SA]
>    (or maybe [ZEm:o~SA] -> I know the [m] sound is differencable of a
>single m but I'm not sure if it is by its lenght or its strenght or
>something)
(I'd guess it's length, the impression of strength being secondary.)

>I eat my vegetables=/Zma~Z.melegym/
>
>
>so I'm not sure: can a desinence disapear when it represent an information
>already represented by a noun?
It seems to me that this is the one weak spot of the polysynthetic
hypothesis. I guess the polysynthecists have to assume that there's a
development French towards the use of more and more bound direct object
pronouns together with free direct object phrases. I don't doubt that in
special cases, such a reduplication can be made, perhaps something like:
/Z-l-Em boku mo~-SA/ instead of /Z-Em mo~-SA boku/ (I love my cat a lot), or
/J-lHi-don d-la-vjA~d A-mo~-SA/ instead of /J-don d-la-vjA~d A-mo~-SA/ (I
give meat to my cat).

From samples like these, different people will come to different
conclusions. Comparisons to other languages are also interesting, especially
to closely related languages such as Spanish, where it seems to me that
bound object pronouns are more often tied up to the verb than in French.

I think that the order of the different phrases is crucial.


>How would these analysis of the spoken French analyse a sentence like
>
>/SpAlA/(I'm not there)
>
>alone the [S] means the present first person singular of the verb to be
>
>[pA] means negation
>
>[lA] means "there"
>
>
>I'm not sure any one-sound-prefix could contain as much information, a
>linguist analysing it as a new language without knowing any european
>language would probably deduce it is a reduced form of a few words..
French is an amazing language! That linguist might note that this /S/ is
related to a /SHi/ or even /J-sHi/ that may appear in other contexts.

kry@s:
j. 'mach' wust