From: andythewiros
Message: 66423
Date: 2010-08-11
>You're right of course. But I wish to say that the different verb forms for each of the different personal pronouns can have a real grammatical function, in that the different verb endings indicate the different persons when the subject pronouns are omitted (as when unstressed) -- exactly as in Spanish. I see no grammatical function for grammatical gender, however, apart from making clear which adjective modifies which noun (which is not a very frequent necessity).
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> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andythewiros" <anjarrette@> wrote:
> >
> > It's what we're taught, what can I say?
>
> My answer would be the same. As a native speaker you learn the gender of nouns as an extra feature or phoneme of the word. I can't recover from memory any kind of difficulty it caused me in learning my first language. It seems to be a problem only for adult learners. Vestjyder speaking 'proper Danish' or some compromise have the same problems getting gender right as English-speakers will.
>Such a model of simplicity.
> > In parts of England people say "we was", "you was", "they was", so
> > the simplification trend was perhaps artificially stopped by
> > teachers and other upholders of old-fashioned grammatical rules,
> > when it reached "am", "are" and "is".
>
> Actually until the early 20th century Danish and Swedish officially distinguished in the present tense between -er (-ar, -er) in all persons singular and -e (-a, -e) in all persons plural. Two modal verbs were inflected like this
>
> present
>
> skal kan
> skal kan
> skal kan
>
> skulle kunne
> skulle kunne
> skulle kunne
>
>
> past
>
> skulde kunde
> skulde kunde
> skulde kunde
>
> skulde kunde
> skulde kunde
> skulde kunde
>
> infinitive
> skulle kunne
>
> ppp
> skullet kunnet
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>
> Add to that that Danish pronounces -nd-, -ld- as -nn-, -ll-. A system like that has to fail sooner or later the failing modal verbs dragging the rest of the system with it.
>
> This is what we have today
>
> present
>
> skal kan
> skal kan
> skal kan
>
> skal kan
> skal kan
> skal kan
>
>
> past
>
> skulle kunne
> skulle kunne
> skulle kunne
>
> skulle kunne
> skulle kunne
> skulle kunne
>
> infinitive
> skulle kunne
>
> ppp
> skullet kunnet
>
>I'm not qualified myself to comment on the last sentence, but I hope others will address your question.
> BTW I'm intrigued by the fact that the whole stripe of middle Germanic dialects, OE OS Old Dutch have 'Einheitsplural', one single plural for all persons in the plural. French uses 'on' + 3sg for 'nous + 1pl, in my opinion to avoid the differently stressed, therefore deviant forms of 1pl (as is 2pl). Perhaps the substrate language (Venetic?) stressed like Latin, and therefore wanted to eliminate the 1pl and 2pl?
>
> Cf
> http://tinyurl.com/363llr9
>
>
> Torsten
>