Re: Origins of French partitive, pas, etc.
- From: kj <socyl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:50:58 +0000 (UTC)
In <e0b89c37-cdbd-4201-bbb4-ad06a268c5f4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
There are no "why"s in vocabulary change. What now appear as negative
particles and specifiers started out as intensifiers (not one STEP!),
eventually turned obligatory, and now (in speech) pretty much replace
the tiny negative particle "ne."
I know about the origin of pas as an intensifier, but still I think
there has to be an explanation for this increase in complexity.
Here's a hypothesis pulled out of my hat: the phonetics of French
were evolving in the direction of abbreviating the duration of the
e in words like ne, ce, le (basically the muting of what ultimately
became the e-muet). This was a global development affecting all
of speech, but it caused problems in certain important areas. For
one, in rapid speech, this global phonetic shift had the consequence
of making the crucial marker "ne" easy to miss, especially when it
followed words ending in "n". The intensifier "pas", which, with
its explosive sound, is hard to miss even in rapid speech, was
added as a form of compesation that eventually became a clearer
(and therefore more useful) marker of negation. At this point
"tiny negative particle 'ne'" became superfluous. (In support of
this idea is the fact that many if not most of these identifiers
begin with the explosive "p": pas, point, plus, personne.)
I'm not saying that this little armchair-linguist scenario reflects
what actually happened. All I'm saying is that it is not entirely
crazy to try to find causal explanations for such an increase in
complexity.
I guess what I'm saying is that I hold as axiomatic that the language
spoken by multitudes does not become more complex *for no reason
at all*. I can't imagine anything of this magnitude taking place
without some strong determinant operating "locally" at the moment
of every utterance. I.e. any increase in complexity must have a
reason (though not necessarily an entirely linguistic one). Whether
we can retrospectively identify this reason is, of course, another
matter.
What prompts this particular line of inquiry is having read long
ago that the evolution of French phonology had necessitated
compensatory changes in other areas of spoken usage. =A0The example
That's true in all language everywhere. There's a constant battle
between ease of articulation and success of communication.
Sure. I don't think I wrote anything to suggest that I thought
otherwise. (If I did, I'm sorry for the confusion.)
Still, I'm after the actual details and research on the particular
phenomena I described in my original post.
I wonder if the origins of the partitive and the negative particles
like "pas" can be traced to similar compensations of phonetic
developments in the evolution of French.
I'm looking for some references on this subject, from the point of
view of the historical evolution of linguistic structures.
Passim in historical lingustics textbooks.
Sorry, I guess I should have been clearer when I wrote "this
subject." I didn't mean the general phenomena of coevolution of
the various aspects of a language, but very specifically, the origin
of the partitive and the negative particles (pas, etc.) in French.
(Somehow, I can't imagine that discussions of these two very specific
phenomena are sprinkled throughout the typical historical linguistic
textbook.)
kj
--
NOTE: In my address everything before the first period is backwards;
and the last period, and everything after it, should be discarded.
.
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