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

I very much agree on the polysynthetic analysis of the verb in modern spoken
French.


On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:16:52 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
...
>On Thursday, January 20, 2005, at 01:52 , # 1 wrote:
>[snip]
>> I'm also a native french speaker so I know what I'm talking about, even
>> if i'm not a linguist
>
>I am sorry, but with respect it is just possible that if you are not a
>linguist you may not know what you are talking about.
Especially when talking about your native language! Foreigners who learnt
the language in school have usually more theoretical knowledge than native
speakers who have never had any linguistics.

Most German speakers, for instance, when asked about the adjective endings,
would say: I can easily explain it because I can use them correctly! Then,
they'd find a lot of contradictory samples, but not the rules, and would
finally give up (unless they'd invent some strange theory or claim that
there'd be no rules).

Foreigners would often be able to tell you that German adjective endings
depend on definitness, case, gender, and number. Then, they'd complain that
it's very difficult to use them correctly.


...
>On Thursday, January 20, 2005, at 06:28 , Philip Newton wrote:
...
>> ........................ where he [Jacques] points
>> out that someone is "misled by the spaces in the archaic French
>> orthography" and says that something which is traditionally written as
>> a separate "word" is part of the verb.
>
>Exactement! Et....
>
>> ..................: "If colloquial
>> French were an unwritten langauge, it would be most clearly analyzed
>> as having a rather complex verb with prefixed subject and object
>> marking."
>
>Précisément! Vive Jacques!      :)
Or even with complex circumfix markings for a several persons (not
necessarily for negations, though).

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