Re: Italian Particles

At 13:26 16/04/00 -0700, you wrote:
>>
>> Do you have any idea about how these particles arose historically?
>
>Wasn't there discussion quite a while back that French was heading in this
>direction with the increased use of the independent pronouns in sentences
>like:
>
>Moi, je pense.
>Toi, tu penses.
>Lui, il pense.
>Elle, elle pense.
>Nous, nous pensons.
>Vous, vous pensez.
>Eux, ils pensent.
>Elles, elles pensent.
>
>or sentences like:
>
>Les chaises, elles sont très belles.
>Le fromage, il est délicieux.
>Ma mère, elle pense que...
>
>?
>
Exactly! I think within a century or so, Spoken French will use particles
as well, coming from the person prefixes (they really are prefixes you
know, even if most of them look exactly like the independent pronouns, it's
not the case of 'je' and 'tu' which can be used only as subject prefixes -
the independent forms are 'moi' and 'toi' as you showed it - and they have
no independent stress).

Or maybe the evolution of the language will be different. With the current
structure of French now, I could easily see it evolve into a truly
polysynthetic language (it can be argued that it is already, but only to a
limited extent) :).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)