Alxmrphi and Dan2:
I think you’ve pretty much set me straight. However, Dan2, talking about Proto Germanic as a “hypothesized earlier language”, together with the article from Aftenposten summarized by vestfoldlilja, worry me. But I’m too old to make a success out of getting off my butt and making an exploration of these ideas myself. I’m going to have to trust you two. (Don’t let me down.) I hope that the hypothetical nature of Proto Germanic is that no one knows what it looked like, not whether or not such a language existed at all.
Alxmrphi:
I didn’t quite think of current-day German as an immutable seed language spreading north and west and being modified by people who were initially speechless. I imagined it, instead, to be the least altered from some starting point, and I gather from you that I was wrong about that as well. The geography helped my myth along. I also hear you when you say that you consider that the recent assertions about English coming directly from Scandinavian languages are so much snake oil.
Regarding,
“This does not imply that English came from any form of Danish, but rather that Danish had an impact on English (just like how Anglo-French completely transformed English via borrowing words - well over 60% of our vocabulary is from (Anglo-French).”:
If “had impact” is the better descriptor than “came from”, the result is nonetheless dramatic in terms of structure as well as vocabulary. I have the idea that the influence of French on English, while extensive, is mainly at the high-blown end of the vocabulary — that when we’re in real trouble, we holler “help”, not “assistance”. (Of course, that’s someone else’s smart remark. I just don’t have an attribution.) I still have the idea that the influence of Nordic languages is more fundamental.
Thinking about your description of how “hesten” and “huset” developed leads me to wonder if the reason these forms did not contribute to the impact of Nordic languages on English, was because they were hard to hear and make sense of if you were listening in a language that already had separated definite articles preceding their nouns. The forms were a surprise to me precisely because I hadn’t really heard them in all the listening that preceded my seeing them in writing.
Dan2:
I was already aware of the lack of verb conjugation as a remarkable feature of Danish grammar. However, when I started the thread, I was ready to call this evidence of its closeness to English, as there is much less difference between English verb forms marking person than there is in German. I didn’t make this argument, because I would have had to explain the residual differences in English, particularly in the verb “to be”, and I certainly don’t know how to do that. At times, I’ve thought that this feature of Danish is so startling that the explanation must be that at some point it was legislated, as new orthographies are.
You said that “English is in some ways closer to German (and even more so to Dutch) and in some ways closer to the Scandinavian languages”. Because you gave me no other examples of how the former is true, I took your illustration of lack of gender marking in the predicate adjective in German as an intended example. I can’t see that as evidence, because there isn’t any gender marking of adjectives in English. You can clear that up just by saying that I’m putting words in your mouth, but I would have liked to have examples.
timtfj:
After all, I can’t see your example of adjective declension in German as a remnant of a more extensive system. It seems to me to be rather an effort to touch up a deficient system — to identify noun gender where the indefinite article is of no help, rather than dropping an ending where none is needed. In fact, this was the mnemonic given to me for coming to terms with descriptive adjectives when I was taught German. If this misses the point, please say so.
I’ll take myšlenka’s word that this feature developed independently from that of definite noun endings.
myšlenka:
“The English irregular plurals should be considered grammatical anomalies or accidents of history because they are unproductive.” I puzzled over the word “unproductive” in your sentence, wondering whether it was a term that had special meaning in linguistics rather than an ordinary use of the word. I decided on the latter — that you are saying that it is not a useful or helpful exercise to consider irregular plurals as forming an additional gender. Is that right or wrong?
At least, I look at the terms “masculine, feminine”, and “neuter” as grammatical labels in this way. I think it is undeniable that the terms began based on an idea of “which sex” or “the lack of either”, but that it is unproductive to think of them as other than mere labels in sorting out and correctly handling the entirety of nouns. (If there was ever an unhelpful term for labeling grammatical gender, I think it has to be the word “common” for the common gender in Danish. In what sense are the common nouns common?)
NorwegianNYC:
It is difficult for me to follow a lot of what you say. (I’m not trying to be rude. I just need some clarification.) I don’t know whether you are saying Scandinavian languages are or are not agglutinative. It sounds at first that you are saying they are not — that they are “syntactical” instead — but agglutination, where it occurs, is certainly part of syntax.
I don’t have any illusions about Danish being agglutinative to the extent that Hungarian is. It was a beginning impression when I started to learn and was based on the earliest instruction in the text I was using. It was not an impression that was supported as I read further. It may have been pointless of me to talk about it in that way at all in this thread. I could just as well have said that this feature of Danish was surprising to me and left it at that.
I don’t understand what you’re saying about “sheep, salmon” and “deer”. These do not form their plural by adding “s”, but I don’t know what this has to do with noun gender. I see gender as a sorting mechanism for deciding how nouns and their modifiers are to be handled grammatically, most importantly with respect to case. Are you saying that, because “the plural” can be thought of as separate gender because of its distinctive handling with regard to case — that nouns not using final “s” in the plural should belong to still another gender? If you want to regard “salmon” and “horse” as having different grammatical gender because of how they form their plural, what about nouns that are uncountable like “jewelry”? You’d have to add many more genders to German if your criterion is the way in which plurals are formed.
vestfoldlilja:
Thanks for the link to the article and your summary. When I read them, I thought I was going to be a hero after all for starting this thread. (I know you will have read Alxmrphi’s opinion.)
Wilma_Sweden:
Thanks for protecting me as long as you could.
Everyone:
I know you aren’t particularly looking for a response from me. I can tell when the dope who started the thread (that would be me) has been elbowed aside so that the experts can take sides and talk to one another. (I really have no problem with that.)
In my initial post, I meant to let you know that I am at least smart enough to realize that Danish is closely related to other Nordic languages. I just never got around to turning that corner. I know that Danes and Norwegians understand one another with no difficulty. Moreover, years ago, I would try samples of the little Danish I knew on Swedes I worked with, would be understood, and would mostly understand their responses. Because Danish is the only Scandinavian language I have any real experience with, it is the language I had to talk about.
