Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Jonlang]

I've never really thought about it before, but why do European languages with cases tend to use a case with adpositions? Some even label the case prepositional case. For example, Irish uses the dative with prepositions (also known as the prepositional case), German uses the genitive, dative, and accusative with certain prepositions, Finnish uses the genitive with postpositions and partitive with prepositions, etc.

[Linguoboy]

For example, Irish uses the dative with prepositions (also known as the prepositional case), German uses the genitive, dative, and accusative with certain prepositions, Finnish uses the genitive with postpositions and partitive with prepositions, etc.

Historically, Indo-European languages had freer word order, so I imagine this was useful for indicating which constituents were governed by a particular adposition. In Latin, for instance, it was common to emphasise adjectives modifying prepositional objects by extraposing them before the preposition, e.g. magnā cum cūrā "with great care".

Modern literary German still contains a few adpositions (e.g. wegen) which can be either preposed or postposed. In addition, it (and, for instance, many Slavic languages) have what are commonly called "two-way" prepositions, where the choice of case is dependent on whether the meaning is locative or allative. In German, the cases used are dative and accusative, e.g. in der Schule "in the school" vs in die Schule "into the school".

[Estav]

I've never really thought about it before, but why do European languages with cases tend to use a case with adpositions? Some even label the case prepositional case. For example, Irish uses the dative with prepositions (also known as the prepositional case), German uses the genitive, dative, and accusative with certain prepositions, Finnish uses the genitive with postpositions and partitive with prepositions, etc.

In Latin, for example, adpositions seem to have developed mainly from adverb-like words, and the use of preposition + accusative or ablative constructions may have developed from situations where previously, those two cases were more freely used independently with the same kinds of meanings. E.g. some words in Classical Latin take a bare accusative to indicate the target of motion, while others use "ad + accusative": the latter could have developed from reinterpretation of a structure where originally, "ad" was a separate adverb that did not form a constituent with the accusative noun.

[hwhatting]

In Latin, for example, adpositions seem to have developed mainly from adverb-like words, and the use of preposition + accusative or ablative constructions may have developed from situations where previously, those two cases were more freely used independently with the same kinds of meanings. E.g. some words in Classical Latin take a bare accusative to indicate the target of motion, while others use "ad + accusative": the latter could have developed from reinterpretation of a structure where originally, "ad" was a separate adverb that did not form a constituent with the accusative noun.

That's the generally accepted theory. Many of these PIE adverbs became either adpositions or verbal prefixes in the daughter languages.

[Kuchigakatai]

I've never really thought about it before, but why do European languages with cases tend to use a case with adpositions? Some even label the case prepositional case. For example, Irish uses the dative with prepositions (also known as the prepositional case), German uses the genitive, dative, and accusative with certain prepositions, Finnish uses the genitive with postpositions and partitive with prepositions, etc.

If a language has cases presumably it has to choose one with adpositions. Although maybe you meant to ask how come the case used is not the default unmarked case, like nominative in German...

Old French and Old Occitan used the accusative with all prepositions, and note the accusative was arguably the unmarked case in these languages.

Akkadian and Classical Arabic used the genitive case with all prepositions, instead of the nominative or accusative.

Romanian shows interesting layers in case usage with prepositions. The oldest, shortest prepositions, largely inherited from Latin, use the accusative (which results from the famous accusative-ablative merger). Newer prepositions, formed via preposition + adverb compounding (e.g. asupra < ad suprā, înaintea < in ab anteā, de-a lungul < dē ad longum illud), use the genitive. And very recent prepositions, derived from verbs meaning 'thanks to' or calqued from French, use the dative. (You may have heard Romanian has only two cases, a nominative-accusative case vs. a genitive-dative case, but the four are strongly distinguished in personal pronouns.)

[Travis B.]

I noticed that in Dutch /s/ and /z/ (e.g. in Over de muur by Klein Orkest), even though they're called that sometimes sound slightly different from English /s/ and /z/ (but also sound different from the palatalized /s/ and /z/ found in my own dialect). Is this an apical versus laminal thing? Or is it that, as in Low Saxon, /s/ and /z/ are somewhat further back than English /s/ and /z/ even though they are distinct from /ʃ/?

[Ares Land]

Some questions about Aramaic!

Do we have any good ideas on why it spread throughout the Fertile Crescent, replacing Akkadian and Canaanite languages?

How close were Hebrew and Aramaic, really? Were they somehow mutually intelligible? (It seems that they weren't, not at all; but from a layman's perspective they do look very similar.)

[Moose-tache]

Early stages of Aramaic and Hebrew probably were mutually intelligible. Here is a comparison of the pronouns:

As for the spread of the language, Aramaic was a useful trade language, then a lingua franca. It probably never became the dominant home language in many of the places where it flourished as an administrative language (like Persia).

[zompist]

How close were Hebrew and Aramaic, really? Were they somehow mutually intelligible? (It seems that they weren't, not at all; but from a layman's perspective they do look very similar.)

We can say they were not mutually intelligible, for the simple reason that there were translations between them. The targumim were written down in the first centuries CE, but are thought to date back to the time of Ezra (-5C). Ezra 4:7 refers to a letter written in Aramaic "and translated", indicating that the language was different enough to require translation. Nehemiah 8:8 describes reading a newly discovered scroll of the Torah and translating it so the people could understand.

Also relevant is Genesis 31:47, where Jacob calls a "heap of witness" Gal-ed (Hebrew), and Laban calls it Yegar-sahadutha (Aramaic).

One more data point: we have military reports from the last days of Judea, in the early 500s; they're written in Hebrew. On the other hand, the Jews of Abu (Elephantine) in Egypt wrote in Aramaic in the 400s.

Of course the languages are closely related, so the effort to learn Aramaic may not have been great.

Do we have any good ideas on why it spread throughout the Fertile Crescent, replacing Akkadian and Canaanite languages?

That's trickier; for my book I asked an Aramaic expert and he couldn't produce a great explanation. Akkadian once was the lingua franca of the region, used even by the Hittites and Egyptians; why did it get replaced by Aramaic, the language of no major state? (Aram itself could bully Israel, but couldn't stand up to Assyria.)

This is a little speculative, but I'd venture that a major factor was the Assyrian and then Babylonian conquest of Syria and Palestine. They needed an administrative language, and Aramaic must have been useful for that. They had conquered Aram first, after all, and why learn two languages of the conquered if you can get by with one? Also, westerners had been immigrating into Mesopotamia for centuries (that's what "Amorites" are), so there was an Aramaic-speaking minority already. The fact that you could write Aramaic far easier and with far less training than Akkadian might be relevant. (We know that the Assyrians often had two scribes involved in royal affairs, one writing Aramaic, one writing Akkadian.)

(I have conflicting sources on whether the Chaldeans, who lived in southern Babylonia and eventually took over, spoke Aramaic or Akkadian.)

Maybe one historical analogy is the spread of Quechua under the Spanish. At least some Spanish, especially missionaries, learned Quechua, but rarely other languages. They actually spread Quechua well past the boundaries of the Inka empire. They also very likely reduced some of the linguistic diversity within the former empire.

[fusijui]

Nahuatl up in Mesoamerica had a similar colonial-era surge and spread, too.

[Ares Land]

Thanks for the answers. (I found a book on the linguistic history of Aramaic which I may pick up some time later on; I'll let you know if there any further insights )

[Jonlang]

Thanks for the feedback, folks! I wasn't ignoring, just very busy! I appreciate it.

[Kuchigakatai]

We can say they were not mutually intelligible, for the simple reason that there were translations between them. The targumim were written down in the first centuries CE, but are thought to date back to the time of Ezra (-5C). Ezra 4:7 refers to a letter written in Aramaic "and translated", indicating that the language was different enough to require translation. Nehemiah 8:8 describes reading a newly discovered scroll of the Torah and translating it so the people could understand.

On the other hand, translations can happen even when there's plenty of mutual intelligibility... For an old example, I'm reminded of the 1206 Treaty of Cabreros, which IIRC was written in both Old Castilian and Old Leonese. And then there's always your modern products rather unnecessarily labelled in both Norwegian and Swedish.

Thanks for the answers. (I found a book on the linguistic history of Aramaic which I may pick up some time later on; I'll let you know if there any further insights )

What's the title?

[Travis B.]

We can say they were not mutually intelligible, for the simple reason that there were translations between them. The targumim were written down in the first centuries CE, but are thought to date back to the time of Ezra (-5C). Ezra 4:7 refers to a letter written in Aramaic "and translated", indicating that the language was different enough to require translation. Nehemiah 8:8 describes reading a newly discovered scroll of the Torah and translating it so the people could understand.

On the other hand, translations can happen even when there's plenty of mutual intelligibility... For an old example, I'm reminded of the 1206 Treaty of Cabreros, which IIRC was written in both Old Castilian and Old Leonese. And then there's always your modern products rather unnecessarily labelled in both Norwegian and Swedish.

I'm reminded of "translations" between different Serbo-Croatian varieties myself.

[Kuchigakatai]

(We know that the Assyrians often had two scribes involved in royal affairs, one writing Aramaic, one writing Akkadian.)

I have the perfect illustration of this phenomenon:



^Part of item 118882 at the British Museum, depicting a scribe writing in Akkadian (on clay) and another one in Aramaic (on papyrus or sim.), recording events during a military campaign, from the 8th century BC.

[Ares Land]

Thanks for the answers. (I found a book on the linguistic history of Aramaic which I may pick up some time later on; I'll let you know if there any further insights )

What's the title?

Aramaic: A History of the First World Language (by Holger Gzella)

(We know that the Assyrians often had two scribes involved in royal affairs, one writing Aramaic, one writing Akkadian.)

I have the perfect illustration of this phenomenon:

^Part of item 118882 at the British Museum, depicting a scribe writing in Akkadian (on clay) and another one in Aramaic (on papyrus or sim.).

That's a great illustration; I love how the depiction of different tools neatly captures the Akkadian/Aramaic difference.

[Kuchigakatai]

A Hungarian in a chat observes something about his language:

Just be like Hungarian, have no gender at all anywhere ever.
Also have the dual merge into the singular rather than the plural.
Everything that comes in pairs is in the singular. Glasses, jeans, eyes, legs are all singular. If you lose an arm, you have "half an arm" rather than one arm instead of two.

[Raphael]

Glasses and jeans are singular in German, too. Arms and legs, less so.

One thing I find a bit irritating about Hungarian (and Japanese, while we're at it) is how they put the surname first in their own language, but put the given name(s) first when speaking or writing a Western language. They should be assertive enough to put the surname first when speaking or writing a Western language, too.

[hwhatting]

One thing I find a bit irritating about Hungarian (and Japanese, while we're at it) is how they put the surname first in their own language, but put the given name(s) first when speaking or writing a Western language. They should be assertive enough to put the surname first when speaking or writing a Western language, too.

Then it will please you to hear that the Economist changed its policy for writing Japanese names form Firstname Lastname to Lastname Firstname not long ago,
No such luck for the Hungarians, though; it's still Viktor Orban.

[Linguoboy]

A Hungarian in a chat observes something about his language:

Just be like Hungarian, have no gender at all anywhere ever.

Has Hungarian stopped suffixing -nő to occupational nouns to indicate female gender since I last tried learning it? And does it no longer distinguish bikák ("bulls") from tehenek ("cows")?

If you lose an arm, you have "half an arm" rather than one arm instead of two.

Traditional Irish works this way too, e.g. Tá sé ar leathláimh "He is one-armed" (literally "He is on half-arm").