TAC 2017-2018 dEhiN

[kevin]

You're right about the Irish, it is really "in" as used for location. Even though I don't really know anyhting about Finnish or Estonian, my first thought was that the literal translation of the Irish phrasing should be inessive rather than essive. Thanks for confirming that.

In Irish, it also seems to be possible to use "mar" (= as) to tell what someone or something is, but I'm not sure in which circumstances and which connotations it has.

[Linguaphile]

You're right about the Irish, it is really "in" as used for location. Even though I don't really know anyhting about Finnish or Estonian, my first thought was that the literal translation of the Irish phrasing should be inessive rather than essive. Thanks for confirming that.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion about Irish not having the same meaning, then, too.
By the way, last night I wrote that in Estonian you "never use inessive with professions," and I wanted to clarify that I meant you never use inessive in Estonian to talk about what someone's profession is (a literal translation of what Irish apparently does). But you can use inessive with the name of a profession in other contexts, like viga oli haridussüsteemis, mitte õpetajas (the fault was in the educational system, not in the teacher). You just can't use it to say that someone works as a teacher, for example. For that you need essive "as".

[linguoboy]

Y'all are killing me with your nitpicking literal-mindedness.

(1) I didn't say it was an exact parallel. Hence the tilde (~), used here with meaning "approximately" borrowed from mathematical notation.
(2) In Finnish, the contemporary essive has several usages which cannot be translated with English "as", such as its temporal usage, e.g. sain kirjeen viime maanantaina. (The speaker was not employed as a Monday when receiving the package.) More to the point, there are also fixed locative uses, e.g. luen lehtiä kotona. (The speaker is not reading the newspaper as a house.) The existence of a distinct inessive case is interesting, but it doesn't invalid these parallels.

I think what distinguishes the Irish construction from the ordinary usage of i is the presence of the possessive. Táim in aistritheoir would have a completely different meaning. Bhínn breoite go minic mar pháiste reeks of Béarlachas to me. A more natural translation of olin lapsena tihti haige would incorporate im' pháiste.

[Linguaphile]

Y'all are killing me with your nitpicking literal-mindedness.

(1) I didn't say it was an exact parallel. Hence the tilde (~), used here with meaning "approximately" borrowed from mathematical notation.
(2) In Finnish, the contemporary essive has several usages which cannot be translated with English "as", such as its temporal usage, e.g. sain kirjeen viime maanantaina. (The speaker was not employed as a Monday when receiving the package.) More to the point, there are also fixed locative uses, e.g. luen lehtiä kotona. (The speaker is not reading the newspaper as a house.) The existence of a distinct inessive case is interesting, but it doesn't invalid these parallels.

I think what distinguishes the Irish construction from the ordinary usage of i is the presence of the possessive. Táim in aistritheoir would have a completely different meaning. Bhínn breoite go minic mar pháiste reeks of Béarlachas to me. A more natural translation of olin lapsena tihti haige would incorporate im' pháiste.

I didn't mean to be nitpicky, but dEhIn had asked about the use of the essive case, and conflating it with "in" just confuses matters, since it's really not what it means. (And there is the inessive case for that.)
Actually, citing kotona to support your point seems rather nitpicky too, because there are so few words that work that way in Finnish (and none in other languages like Estonian).
You're right that essive is used in certain temporal expression in Finnish, like your maanantaina example, but those are still related to a temporary state. Locative expressions like kotona are vestigal of an older locative use of essive that has disappeared. In modern Finnish they are fixed expression and IIRC there are only a dozen or so of them: kotona 'at home', kaukana 'far', luona 'by, near', ulkona 'outside', takana 'behind' and so on. But they're fixed expressions, not a productive use of the essive case in modern Finnish, and they are quite limited.

[dEhiN]

For anyone who's following my TAC and who's interested in my Tamil journey, I've decided to post things like new vocab and questions and such in my Tamil thread, rather than here. You can find it here.

[księżycowy]

Followed.

[linguoboy]

You're right that essive is used in certain temporal expression in Finnish, like your maanantaina example, but those are still related to a temporary state.

Which is exactly what the Irish construction expresses! Táim i m'aistritheoir contrasts with less marked copular expressions like aistritheoir is ea mé[*], which simply express identification. In contrast to those, it emphasises the temporal nature of the identification. That's why I see a parallel here: In both cases, you have an originally locative expression modified or extended to express a current state. No, the details aren't the same, but try to make out the wolf among the weeds.


[*] All examples Munster. Particularly in Ulster dialects, use of the bí i + POSS construction has spread at the expense of constructions with the copula and is not perceived as the more marked expression.

[dEhiN]

Táim i m'aistritheoir contrasts with less marked copular expressions like aistritheoir is ea mé[*], which simply express identification. In contrast to those, it emphasises the temporal nature of the identification.

Would this be equivalent in usage to estar and ser in Spanish/Portuguese? So bí i + POSS is used to for temporary states, while the copula is for permanent states? If so, then why isn't the copula used for profession? Isn't that generally a more permanent state?

[dEhiN]

Followed.

நன்றி!

[księżycowy]

Bhí Tomás deich mbliana ina atúrnae ach tá sé ina ghiúistís anois.
Tom was an attorney for ten years, but he's a justice now.

[księżycowy]

நன்றி!

いいえ。

[linguoboy]

Would this be equivalent in usage to estar and ser in Spanish/Portuguese? So bí i + POSS is used to for temporary states, while the copula is for permanent states? If so, then why isn't the copula used for profession? Isn't that generally a more permanent state?

It is. I literally just gave you an example of this (aistritheoir is ea mé).

If you want me to give you a fuller account of how this construction works and how it contrasts to the copular expressions, I can. Originally I was speaking to księżycowy, who already has a basic understanding of this area of Irish syntax. My impression was that your studies hadn't advanced to that point yet.

[Linguaphile]

You're right that essive is used in certain temporal expression in Finnish, like your maanantaina example, but those are still related to a temporary state.

Which is exactly what the Irish construction expresses! Táim i m'aistritheoir contrasts with less marked copular expressions like aistritheoir is ea mé[*], which simply express identification. In contrast to those, it emphasises the temporal nature of the identification. That's why I see a parallel here: In both cases, you have an originally locative expression modified or extended to express a current state. No, the details aren't the same, but try to make out the wolf among the weeds.


[*] All examples Munster. Particularly in Ulster dialects, use of the bí i + POSS construction has spread at the expense of constructions with the copula and is not perceived as the more marked expression.

Okay, but the maanantaina example is Finnish, and töötan tōlkijana is Estonian. Estonian doesn't use essive that way.
I don't know any Irish, so I can't speak to how similar the phrases are into the two languages since I only know one of them. I was just going off the comment someone made, that it means you are "in" something in Irish.
If you're talking about reconstructed Proto-Finnic, I guess I can see that connection. But keep in mind that it's only the proto forms and a few vestiges in Finnish, not Estonian.
Even the Wikipedia article, which I think is where you got your sentences Sain kirjeen viime maanantaina and Luen lehtiä kotona, points out that it is considered an old locative case, and that only a few fixed expressions "retain the ancient locative meaning" (and again that's Finnish, not Estonian.) So yeah, if you mean etymologically, I can see the outline of an old proto-wolf in the weeds if I squint. . But in Estonian that wolf in the weeds has died. It's interesting, though, to know that Irish seems to have a bit of grammatical commonality with Proto-Finnic.

[dEhiN]

Would this be equivalent in usage to estar and ser in Spanish/Portuguese? So bí i + POSS is used to for temporary states, while the copula is for permanent states? If so, then why isn't the copula used for profession? Isn't that generally a more permanent state?

It is. I literally just gave you an example of this (aistritheoir is ea mé).

If you want me to give you a fuller account of how this construction works and how it contrasts to the copular expressions, I can. Originally I was speaking to księżycowy, who already has a basic understanding of this area of Irish syntax. My impression was that your studies hadn't advanced to that point yet.

Yeah I know you just gave an example; I guess I just wanted to confirm that I was understanding your example correctly. And you're right, giving me a fuller account might not be the best right now. I wouldn't mind getting into it, but chances are it'll bring up a lot more questions and stuff. (Although that's one way to learn...)

[Michael]

I spent the evening looking up declensions for Albanian vocab. It was a bit frustrating because Wiktionary had the full declension for some nouns, but only the nominative forms for others. I tried looking for an Albanian dictionary that would list the declensions, but I could only find this. Unfortunately, like Wiktionary, that dictionary only lists the declensions for some of the nouns and even then only the nominative forms. I also found this other dictionary, but they don't even list the forms. However, using a mix of the three of them I've been able to determine at least the nominative forms for the nouns that I had added some time ago from the Peace Corps course. I'm still going through what I added, but I'm making headway. I think I'm also starting to understand the adjectival articles in Albanian, and how they're used.

It would be a novel idea if you listed the nouns you learn from each lesson and the [nominative] definite forms you come up with here, so I could go over them for you and explain why I corrected those that that needed correcting.

Speaking of Peace Corps, I recently discovered the 7-volume Albanian Basic Course by the Defense Language Institute, and I was delighted to see that it teaches Gheg, using a professional and phonologically-descriptive orthography at that, and comes with all the recordings! The Gheg dialect used is not as distant from the Standard and the Tosk dialects it’s based on as are the Northeastern dialects of Kosovo, at the extreme end of the continuum, which makes it even more ideal.

As the dialect taught in the course seems to be from the linguistic center of Albania, it must be either the dialect of Tirana, a Central dialect and the most prominent one, or that of Elbasan, a Southern dialect widely considered the most neutral among Albanian dialects. I think the first standardized version of Albanian, replaced by the Tosk-based one in the 1940’s, was based on the Elbasan dialect because of its being at the center of the Albanian-dialect continuum.

Wiktionary had a page of Albanian declension table templates which I guess people can use for regular nouns? Through that table and from looking up some nouns, I now know that regular feminine nouns ending in -ë are declined (sing.indef./pl.indef./sing.def./pl.def.) as -ë/-a/-a/-at for nominative and -ë/-ën/-a/-at for accusative. As you can see, both nominative and accusative cases use the same definite endings. However, I'm not sure how to tell yet if a feminine noun that ends in -ë is regular or not. (I'm also not sure if there's such a thing as regular noun declension patterns in Albanian. I'm assuming so because Wiktionary has those templates.) I did edit the Wiktionary entry for gocë to include the declension table because from what I could tell, it seemed to follow the same pattern (at least for the nominative). Hopefully I was correct!

Yes, there’s a group of what must be a hundred feminine nouns whose declension template is C/ë, -a, -ë(t). At first I thought there was no logic behind them, but something I’ve come to notice about them is that they tend to be body parts, fruits, or units of time, but keep in mind këng/ë, -a, -ë(t) “song”. This may help you next expect where to find them, and if I can, I’ll try to compile a list of all the nouns I’ve learned in Discovering Albanian with that pattern of pluralization.

[vijayjohn]

1) Does such a thing exist in Arabic, Persian, or Udu?

Yes, the Qur'an (in Classical Arabic) also has this distinction AFAICT.

[dEhiN]

Time for an update.

Last week I stepped up the number of new cards I was learning per day in Anki. I've been using a spreadsheet to track how many unlearned cards I have left. I try to update it every day and use it to adjust how many cards I learn daily. Because of the tracker, I was able to do 30 new cards per day for about 5 days which was spread over French, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Tamil.

This has let me catch up on all my Spanish unlearned cards. I'm going through my Korean deck at only 1 new card per day. So I try to do several cards for the other languages. But I seem to be able to only do a max of 7 or 8 new cards per language. Anything more and I start to forget words, even if I add in more learning steps.

I haven't been able to catch up on adding all the vocab from my language notebook to Anki. I was calculating things and realized that I have about 10-11 pages worth of vocab left to add. Each page tends to have about 17 new words on it, which means about 170 - 187 new vocab. So even though I pushed hard last week to reduce the number of unlearned cards in Anki, the frustrating thing is that I might need to push even harder or risk forever playing catch-up.

Apart from that I went through a little bit of the Spanish for Beginners I course. I am still playing catch-up, but my hope is to go through what's left intensively this week, because Spanish for Beginners II starts on February 26. I also wrote out a few more declensions for the list of Albanian words I have. Even though I haven't gotten around to it, I want to start an Albanian thread, and post my list plus the declensions I have. Especially because Michael generously offered to help me with the declensions. On Thursday I got a chance to practice my Tamil a bit: I was hanging out with my singer friend who's also Sri Lankan. (Her mom is my Tamil tutor). I got to chat with her a little in Tamil, as well as ask questions, get clarifications, etc. She even told me a simple Tamil story that's told to children - a story about a fox. She had to repeat 90% or 95% of what she said word by word, as well as share with me the English meaning. But it was fun and felt like when doing an analysis of a written text.

[dEhiN]

Time for an update:

This week I've basically only done Anki. I'm down to a new card count of under 500 words! At the rate I'm going, I should be through all the new Portuguese vocab in 5 days. I didn't transfer any vocab from my notebook to Anki; I have about 12 pages worth of vocab which, at 17 words per page, means about 204 new cards. I think I haven't added them partly because seeing the new card count decrease every day makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something. If I transfer those 12 pages worth to Anki, mentally I'll feel like I've gone backwards. (Of course I realize this isn't true, but I suppose that's how my brain works!)

I also haven't added them, or taken any steps to looking up more Albanian declensions or creating that Albanian thread, or worked on catching up on Spanish for Beginners I (even though the next course starts tomorrow), because of all the recent discussion on here about moderating styles, forum policy, the moderating team, etc. To be honest, it's been pretty draining and turning me off from here. I've had to fight the urge to leave this forum. Don't get me wrong: I think the discussion is needed and seems like it's been a long time coming. I also think it's been a pretty good discussion so far, even if there are opposing views.

But there's that saying "don't peek behind the curtain". What, for me, was a fun community where I could relate to others with the same hobbies and interests as me, became a course in navigating human politics. I know I'm the one who offered to help out the mod team in anyway I could, and when they offered me to be a global mod, I gladly accepted. So I'm not complaining. However, I haven't felt the energy to do much else in regard to here.

Hopefully that'll change this coming week.

[księżycowy]

That's largely why I'm staying out of it. I've got enough going on as it is.

Not that I don't think that it's a nessicary thing, but as you say, it can be draining.

Take a break from responding to it. That's what everyone else is doing/advocating. I'd certainly hate to see you leave over it. Not that I don't have some form of contact with you, even if you did, but still.

[linguoboy]

What, for me, was a fun community where I could relate to others with the same hobbies and interests as me, became a course in navigating human politics.

I really hope this doesn't come off sounding snide, but welcome to the world I've been living in for the last five years or more.

I wasn't even going to check That Thread until tomorrow, but then I saw Vijay had posted. I probably won't respond there until tomorrow morning at the earliest, so you can rest easy.