From: Christophe Grandsire (christophe.grandsire@free.fr)
Date: Wed May 22 2002 - 01:22:18 EST
En réponse à Mangiat <mangiat@tin.it>:
>
> Certainly not;-) inf.: vess
> pres. (I will include also pronouns and pronominal proclitics): mi (a)
> sont
> [mI a suNt], ti te seet [tI te se:t], lù/lee l'è [lY lE]/[le: lE], nun
> (a)
> semm [nYN a sEm], vialter (a) sii [vjalter a si:], lor (i) hinn [lu:r
> jIn].
>
And I thought Romance languages were not exotic enough to my taste :))) . Your
dialect also features these strange personal clitics. Where do they come from?
Grammaticalisation of the personal pronouns in subject position which went so
far that they lost meaning, until people had to reuse the subject pronouns
despite their presence? What surprises me is that they ever were felt necessary
enough to become mandatory (I could understand it from a language like French
which lost most of its conjugation suffixes, but it doesn't appear in French as
much as in Friulan, whereas Friulan didn't lose much of its endings!!).
> I will list you also Aemilian and Friulian inf. and aff. (these langs
> have
> particular conjugation for interrogative also) pr. tense:
>
> Aem.: inf: èsser; pr.: mé a sòn, té t'î, ló l'é, nó a sèn, vó a sî, lòur
> i
> én;
> Fr.: inf.: jessi; pr.: o soi, tu sês, al è, o sin, o sês, a son.
>
> Unfortunately I don't have other dictionaries/grammars at hand...
>
For Friulan: http://www.eirelink.com/alanking/modals/documents/do-g-frl.htm
I found this site enlightening :)) .
>
> STARE > ESTARE ok, that's the normal French development; but how's it
> possible that the stress shifts on the *first* syllable (in French???)
> and
> give EST(A)RE? If it were from STARE I'd expect *éter, not e^tre.. any
> ideas?
I have to look at this one. I'm thinking that it could indeed come from ESSERE,
but the appearance of the T is not a normal development. Maybe one of the
infinitive contaminated the other as they became synonymous and finally
collapsed into a single declension... I have a book about Old French at home.
When I'm there I will look at it.
And about Spanish estar/ser: which are their respective uses? I
> seem
> to recall positional verb/copula, respectively, but I'm not sure...
>
The difference between both verbs is more complicated than that, especially
since they can both be used as copulae. As copulae, ser defines more intrisic
qualities, while estar is more about peripheric qualification. Also, indeed,
estar is used exclusively for position (meaning inherited from Latin). With
past participles estar seems to be used with transient states while ser is more
used for unchangeable states (though IIRC you say "estar muerto" instead of
*"ser muerto", which sounds a bit contradictory - maybe connected to the belief
of the resurrection of the bodies at the end of days of the Catholic
Church ;))) -). There are also plenty of expression which differ only by the
use of "ser" or "estar" (I remember the long lists of expressions I had to
learn for my Spanish classes :)) , though I don't remember the expressions
themselves :)) ). Here again, ser seems to be more intrisic and estar more
transient.
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.
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