[net.nlang] Inflected Languages

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