From: aquila_grande
Message: 44910
Date: 2006-06-08
>
> At 4:19:50 PM on Monday, June 5, 2006, aquila_grande wrote:
>
> >> There is no reason to attribute any of these to AA
> >> influence.
>
> > Why not?
>
> > Historically, these are typical AA properties, and they
> > are seen first in the IE languages that came into direct
> > contact with AA languages.
>
> The properties in question (which were inexplicably snipped
> from the previous post) were:
>
> > -Word order: SVO/VSO instead of old IE SOV.
> > -Definite article
> > -Preprositions instead of cases or postpositions
> > -Attributs after their head
> > -Loss of flexional comparative and superlative, and
> > development of constructions like it: grosso, piu grosso,
> > il piu grosso
> > -Two genders - masculine and feminine
>
> Well outside the Mediterranean:
>
> * NW Germanic seems to have been SOV. The earliest Old
> English still favors SOV, but late OE favors SVO.
> Icelandic has also become SVO. Each has a definite
> article derived from a demonstrative pronoun, and it's
> not the same pronoun.
>
> * Swedish and Danish have reduced three genders to two.
>
> * Insular Celtic has gone from three genders to two in
> historical times. It also innovated VSO word order.
>
> * Lithuanian has gone from three genders to two.
>
> AA influence is not involved in these changes, so clearly AA
> influence is not needed to explain similar developments
> elsewhere. And the notion that Romance developments are
> evidence of AA influence on Latin is just plain bizarre,
> never mind that I'd expect significant influence on syntax
> to be accompanied by significant lexical borrowing.
>
> Brian
>