Glen writes: "Funny enough, a lot of languages use
"have" to
> declare the existence of something, even French /il
y a/ "there is"
> lit."it has there" < /avoir/ "have". It's as if to
state someone's
or
> something's "possession of existence".
Yes. In Portuguese the expression: "Tem muita gente
lá." (Lit. It has a lot of guys there) is very usual.
("Tem" is the 3rd. person sing. of "ter", to have).It
seems to me that this portuguese construction has no
subject at all, not even a neutral subject as german
"es" or english "it". Sometimes this kind of
construction gets even more abstract: "Tem gente que
lê muito." (lit. It has guys who read a lot, or in
German "Es gibt viele Leute...", although in german we
can also find expressions like: "Es hat viele Leute").
Klaus.
---
richard.wordingham@... escreveu:
---------------------------------
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon"
<glengordon01@...> >
So, in the absence of both "be" or "have" in unmarked
equational,
> descriptive or possessive sentences, the exact
original meaning of
> *es- might be subject to question. Particularily so
with the Semitic
> correspondance. In Akkadian /is^u:/ can mean both
"have"
(possessive)
> and "there is" (descriptive). Its secondary use to
declare the
> general existence of things is the key here.
>
> Mid IE would have borrowed the Semitic verb to be
used more as
> "there is" (something like in Mandarin /you ren/
"there are people"
> as opposed to /shi ren/ "it's a person").
Coincidentally /you/ also
> means "to have". Funny enough, a lot of languages
use "have" to
> declare the existence of something, even French /il
y a/ "there is"
> lit."it has there" < /avoir/ "have". It's as if to
state someone's
or
> something's "possession of existence".
No, just a natural tendency to claim everything for
oneself :)
E.g. "We have your argument here."
> So in effect, it's along the lines of the following
fully plausible
> interrelationship:
>
> "to have" == "there has/is" == "is"
You've established the first stage. What's your
example for the
second stage? Semantically, I can see an intermediate
stage as a
verb of location, "There's the wolf on the hill" =>
"The wolf is on
the hill", but are there any examples of even that
change?
Could there be a more direct link? French (and
general Romance)
expressions such as "avoir froid" 'to be cold' come to
mind. A loss
of contrast between an abstract noun and adjective
would be a quick
route ("have happiness" = "be happy"), but I've no
evidence for such
an occurrence.
Richard.
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
cybalist-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo!
Terms of Service.
Yahoo! Mail - 6MB, anti-spam e antivírus gratuito. Crie sua conta agora:
http://mail.yahoo.com.br