sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog) (10/15/85)
In article <518@tjalk.UUCP> dick@tjalk.UUCP (Dick Grune) writes: >Icelandic is the most inflected of the Germanic languages and >easily outdoes German (with English and Afrikaans fighting over the >title of the "least inflected one"). I might have misunderstood what Dick means wirh "inflected" but I like to argue a little. I know very little of Afrikaans, but using the same form for "I talk", "I talked", "I have talked", seems to be a good indication for a low grade of inflection. But English... I would say that English and Swedish are on the same level. As far I understand, inflection mainly concerns verbs, nouns, pronouns and adjectives. (Slavian languages also inflect numbers, but that's another story.) Let me compare the languaes. Verbs ===== In English it's In Swedish it's ({ = "a) I talk / am We talk / are Jag talar / {r Vi talar / {r (Thou talkest / art) You talk / are Du talar / {r Ni talar / {r He talks / is They talk / are Han talar / {r De talar / {r As you see, the verb forms are independent of the grammatic person in Swedish. (It's the same in all tenses.) As far I can see this is sign of low grade of inflection. In one sense Swedish is more inflected: Swedish have one more mode of the verb. To any form you could add an -s which put the verb in the passive voice. The passive voice could also be constructed with an auxillary verb like in other languages. Nouns ===== This concers three things: Genders, cases and deklinations. English have one gender, Swedish has four. But in Swedish only persons cab be female or masculine. Things are always neutral or real. The only differce is between female, masculine and real is the pronoun. Practically it's like having two genders. You must choose between "den" or "det". (Compare German: der/die/das). In this sense Sweidsh is more inflected. English have one case, Swedish have two; nominative and genetive. But the Sweidsh genetive is the very much like the English "'s". The genetive doesn't affect articles. Neither can a preposition impose genetive like in German. I would say that the langauges are equal in this sense. So we come to declinations, i.e. putting things in plural. Here's no discussion: Englisg have one (-s with some special rules added and some irregularties like "children"), Swedish have five (5), -ar, -er, -or, -n and none. (Then we have forgotten about loan words.) Pronouns ======== The only differnce is that Swedish have one more 3rd per. sing. See gender above. Adjectives ========== Swedish is here somewhat more inflected. In expressions like "the red house" the adjective has one form for masculine, one for female/real/neutral and one for plural. To conclude: I don't want to say that Dave is wrong, but I like to know what he means. (Here I talked only about Swedish. Danes and Norwegianshave to talk for themselves.) Erland Sommarskog ENEA DATA Sweden ...!mcvax!enea!sommar
cottrell@sdcsla.UUCP (Gary Cottrell) (10/18/85)
In article <940@enea.UUCP> sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog) writes: >I know very little of Afrikaans, but using the same form for "I talk", >"I talked", "I have talked", seems to be a good indication for a low >grade of inflection. If you have a low grade inflection, perhaps you should see Dr. Chomsky. gary cottrell cottrell@nprdc (ARPA) Institute for Cognitive Science sdcsvax!sdcsla!cottrell (USENET) UCSD
dick@tjalk.UUCP (Dick Grune) (10/19/85)
In <940@enea.UUCP> Erland Sommarskog writes: > I might have misunderstood what Dick means wirh "inflected" but I like > to argue a little. I mean the amount of details that one has to know to be able to construct a sentence that is correct in a context-free sense. Here Swedish requires a lot more rules than English does. A quick scan of the Swedish grammar; many examples already supplied by Erland. Possessive pronouns: min hustru -- my wife mitt hus -- my house mina barn -- my children 3 1 Participles: ... hade kallat -- ... had called (active) ... blev kallad -- ... was called (passive) ... hade pensionerats --... got pensioned (reflexive) 3 1 Gender: 2 in Swedish (den & det), 1 in English (the). You have to learn the gender with the word. Plural: 5 ways to form them, vs 1 in English. This virtually means you have to learn each word with its plural. Etc.... The only place where English has more forms than Swedish is in the present tense, as explained by Erland. I still think my point stands and that Swedish has no right to the title of "least inflected Germanic language". (The fight between English and Afrikaans goes on!) I don't mean this to say that English would in any sense be better (it's not my native language either); I understand what inflextion is good for, and I like inflected languages. They allow me to say some things more succinctly and more poignantly than uninflected ones, but that is probably a matter of taste, mine. And I like non-inflecting languages, because they are easier to get started in (although they tend to collect in syntax what they give you in grammar). Dick Grune Vrije Universiteit de Boelelaan 1081 1081 HV Amsterdam the Netherlands