obler9 wrote:These scholars are trying to let us know how Rumanian has completely lost the sense of the consecutio temporum, that is something very characteristic within the Latin syntax. And how rumanian has extremely simplified the Latin tense system.
Maybe you can't get it exactly because you have not the sense of the consecutio temporum.
KingHarvest wrote:Rebecca Posner has been rather discredited, her knowledge of Romance Languages is somewhat subpar.
KingHarvest wrote: but considering passato remoto and trapassato remoto exist only in written Standard Italian, I would argue that they don't exist on the same level as all the past tenses that Romanian has which are actually used in speech..
KingHarvest wrote:Regardless, the verbal system of Romance is extremely different from Latin's so the fact that Romanian's verbal system differs slightly from the Romance languages' is not valid grounds to say that Romanian is further removed from Latin than Italian is.
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
modus.irrealis wrote:obler9 wrote:These scholars are trying to let us know how Rumanian has completely lost the sense of the consecutio temporum, that is something very characteristic within the Latin syntax. And how rumanian has extremely simplified the Latin tense system.
Maybe you can't get it exactly because you have not the sense of the consecutio temporum.
I actually find comparing languages inherently interesting (no matter what nefarious purposes they might be used for), so to follow up on this, you mean something like with (all corrections welcome):
Latin: dico quid faciam / dicabam quid facerem
French: je dis ce que je fais / je disais ce que je faisais
Italian: dico che faccio / dicevo che facevo [?]
in the Romanian version would have the same verb used for "do" whatever the tense of "dico"?
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
I am more than sure you have never read anything about or written by this scholar
Overall, Ms. Posner gives a broad but shallow overview of how she believes Latin evolved into the Romance languages during the middle ages. Nonetheless, I found several obvious mistakes, which lead me to believe that she had some basic knowledge of some of the languages she used to illustrate her research efforts but not any substantial knowledge in all of the Romance languages as the title might allude. In my opinion, she spends too much time and effort baffling the reader with highly technical, linguistic jargon in order to explain simple linguistic idiosyncrasies, but most of her explanations are quite shallow and inconclusive. In many of her examples, she jumps from point to point without ever convincingly defending her position on why certain changes happened. She just states some examples and then goes on to something else hoping the reader will figure it out. Then, after she has confused the reader with highly technical linguistic frases just to explain a specific sound or spelling, she makes references to other parts of her book, which is difficult to navigate through, desperately trying to divert the reader's attention away from the obvious - that she did not support her theories with chronological evidence from old texts as is done in other comparative linguistic books.
I noted numerous mistakes in spellings and grammer where she was defending a theory from a change in Latin to a word in Spanish, (i.e. "guadañar," should have been "ganar," rather than converting "guadagnare" from Italian; and "guarnir," also from Italian but not Spanish should be "guarnecer"; and "dormió" is instead "durmió") Galician ("antes de chegarem" rather than "...chegaren"), Portuguese (future subjunctive is not exactly the same as the personal infinitive; "fêz" should be "fez"), and Italian ("Lo si compra" should be "Se lo compra" -"si" changes to "se" before "lo", "la", "li" "le" & "ne"; "Non mi si ascolta" is never said. What is said is "Non mi ascolta nessuno.).
In addition, her comments about the Portuguese understanding Spanish but not reciprocally is obvious in that given the same or a similar word, Portuguese is truncated and/or nasalized (besides the overwhelming "sh" and "zh" sounds of which the continental Portuguese pride themselves) making it difficult for the Spanish (and might I add the Brazilians) to decipher. She states that there is a long-standing history of animosity between the two countries going back to the date of Portugal's last independence from Spain 1580-1643 (which was really 1580-1640).
In addition, Ms Posner stated that "there was little reliable data to support the existence of Philippine Spanish." Well, she obviously doesn't know her Philippino/Spanish history nor any of the languages and dialects of the Philippines. Spain ruled the Philippines for over 350 years, and there are many hundreds of Spanish words incorporated in Tagalog and several of the other Austronesian languages spoken in the Philippines. Furthermore, there does exist a Spanish Creole dialect known as "Chavacano" which was born out of 18th century Spanish. It does not belong to the Austronesian family of languages; however, its lexicon is Spanish but its syntax is similar to that of other Philippine languages. Chavacano is spoken in Zamboanga, Basilan, Cavite, Ternate, and Ermita (Manila).
She was ignorant in her remarks that Philippino was just a "relexified Portuguese Creole" when Portugal had no linguistic influence whatsoever in the Philippines, and there aren't any similarities between Tagalog or any other Philippine dialect/language and Portuguese other than what they have in common with Spanish.
I was hoping she would have explained the nasalization of Portuguese better than saying it was probably due to Celtic influence. Portuguese was born in the late 12th-13th centuries (long after the Celts were Romanized) out of Galician, which is directly linked to Celtic, and there is no nasalization in that language whatsoever. Furthermore, 15-16th century Spanish has evidence of nasalization (the original Don Quixote has lots of examples) which is still prevalent in Andalusian Spanish (Moorish influence?). In all words ending in "n", Andalusian and Caribbean Spanish nasalize the final "n" (though not lexical) much more than any other dialect, which would lead me to believe that the pronunciation of the letter "n" as "ng" (or represented by "~" over vowels in Portuguese) has an influence other than Celtic. What caused the omission of the intervocalic "l" and "n" in Portuguese and Galician?
She never convincingly explained the conversation of "ç, z, and c" to be pronounced as Þ (theta) in Spain in the 16-17th centuries. Andalusia and Galicia resisted until the 19/20th century, and Catalá, Aragonès, and Asturianu-Lleones never adopted it. The folklore has always been that King Felipe II (1527-1598) had a lisp and forced his subjects to imitate him. However, reality is something different because Portugal never adopted such a lisp when he ruled there, but instead, the Portuguese pronounce the final "s" like "sh", and "z" and "c" have the same sounds as in English.
Her knowledge of Latin, French, and some of the obscure/dead dialects is commendable. However, her research efforts thorough enough and arguments not convincing despite the fact that such material on Romance dialects comparison (especially the ones she picked) is hard to find. It is difficult to find and read credible material in which the author truly has a profound and substantiated knowledge basis to share with his or her readers on all Romance dialects/languages and their evolution from Latin, and Ms. Rebecca Posner did not impress me.
I showed you how Rumanian has actually less past tenses than the other Romance languages and how Rumanian lost Latin tenses that are actually preserved in the other romance languages: so it's more than clear you do not know the Romance languages and you dare to talk about subjects you do not know...
On the contrary a lot of native Italian speakers from southern Italy use them much more than the written language does, even against the rules of the Italian grammar.
KingHarvest wrote:I am more than sure you have never read anything about or written by this scholar
Actually, I have read her work, and I was very unimpressed. Her knowledge of the major Romance languages was sub-par, though I can't speak for the lesser ones. A review of her work (not done by me):
Overall, Ms. Posner gives a broad but shallow overview of how she believes Latin evolved into the Romance languages during the middle ages. Nonetheless, I found several obvious mistakes, which lead me to believe that she had some basic knowledge of some of the languages she used to illustrate her research efforts but not any substantial knowledge in all of the Romance languages as the title might allude. In my opinion, she spends too much time and effort baffling the reader with highly technical, linguistic jargon in order to explain simple linguistic idiosyncrasies, but most of her explanations are quite shallow and inconclusive. In many of her examples, she jumps from point to point without ever convincingly defending her position on why certain changes happened. She just states some examples and then goes on to something else hoping the reader will figure it out. Then, after she has confused the reader with highly technical linguistic frases just to explain a specific sound or spelling, she makes references to other parts of her book, which is difficult to navigate through, desperately trying to divert the reader's attention away from the obvious - that she did not support her theories with chronological evidence from old texts as is done in other comparative linguistic books, ETC.............
This is the best survey I've seen of the Romance languages to date. Its coverage of them is broad and deep -- it covers more than just phonology (yippee!), and it gives due attention to all sorts of languages that other Romance texts too often ignore (Rumanian, Asturian, even the Romance creoles, as well as lots of nonstandard dialects of the main Romance languages).
And yet it's still accessible to readers with not much linguistic background, making it useful even in an intro-to-Romance course.
Suzanne Fleischman, Anthropological Linguistics"...this book will undoubtedly take its place among the major works of synthesis on Romance languages."
Marc Picard, Canadian Journal of Linguistics"...Posner's The Romance Languages is a work of immense erudition and scholarship which will be most appreciated by those who have some prior knowledge of the history and development of this widespread language family."
KingHarvest wrote:[I showed you how Rumanian has actually less past tenses than the other Romance languages and how Rumanian lost Latin tenses that are actually preserved in the other romance languages: so it's more than clear you do not know the Romance languages and you dare to talk about subjects you do not know...
Pay attention to what I said, I admitted I had forgotten the trapassato remoto in Italian, and you still aren't admitting that you're ignoring one of the Romanian past tenses, so that would make Romanian and Italian equal in the number of past tenses.
KingHarvest wrote:On the contrary a lot of native Italian speakers from southern Italy use them much more than the written language does, even against the rules of the Italian grammar.
Pay attention, I said Standard Italian, not southern dialects and Standard Italian that's been heavily influenced by them.
KingHarvest wrote:If we removed these tenses from the Italian grammar, the Italian syntax should be distorted.
Funny how the subjunctive is dying in Italian and the government makes commercials in the vain attempt to get people to start using it again.
KingHarvest wrote:You don't say "ex te quaero." 1.) the e is unnecessary 2.) it's only ex before a vowel, it's e before a consonant 3.) rogo is the normal verb for to ask
KingHarvest wrote:Of course, if we examine the syntax of the much more common indirect speech, we're going to see much larger departures between Latin and Italian syntax.
KingHarvest wrote:I say that I see you
L: dico me videre te
I: dico che ti vedo
KingHarvest wrote:I say that I saw you
L: dico me visisse te
I: dico che ti ho visto
KingHarvest wrote:Now here comes the really fun part
KingHarvest wrote:I said that I saw you
L: dixi me vedere te
I: ho detto che ti vedevo
KingHarvest wrote:I said that I had seen you
L: dixi me visisse te
I: ho detto che ti avevo visto
KingHarvest wrote:Clearly, Italian is not that similar to Latin.
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
(“Lecture XVI. Grammatical inflections. II” in George Perkins Marsh et alii, “Lectures on the English Language”, p. 357)“It is an interesting observation, that the modern Italian has inherited from its Latin mother a great freedom of periodic arrangement […] It has an immense advantage over the French, in variety of admissible collocations of words in a given sentence, as well as in the greater number of allied forms of expression […] The freedom of Italian syntax is to be ascribed in part to the fact that it is both an aborigenal and, to a great extent, an unmixed tongue, spoken by the descendants of those to whom the maternal Latin was native, and retaining the radical forms and grammatical capabilities of that language, whereas French and Spanish are strangers to the soil, corrupted by a large infusion of foreign ingredients, and spoken by nations alien in descent from those who employed the common source of both, as their mother-tongue…”
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
loqu wrote: Just have a look at the whole bunch of compound tenses which Latin didn't have and Italian (Spanish, French, Portuguese) is full with -- but oh, Romanian still have them simple.
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
loqu wrote:Well, we have seen a clear evolution in the character. He came first to argue that Romanian is not the closest to Latin, then he evolved to show his real face and make a promotion of the supposed proximity of Italian to Latin. He changed subject all in all from Romanian to Italian.
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
The nice think is that, talking about national languages, at the second place, as regards the closness to Latin, there is Spanish.
loqu wrote:A search on Google on Rebecca Posner is very clear
Only one book on Amazon, this very thread on Unilang and a similar one on Antimoon where a very familiar Artiglio uses the same arguments to discredit Romanian and insult everyone who doesn't share his view
Just wanted to add the fun fact.
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
sa wulfs wrote:The nice think is that, talking about national languages, at the second place, as regards the closness to Latin, there is Spanish.
Loqu, I think he's offering you to be his trusted lieutenant if you join his side.
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
sa wulfs wrote:The nice think is that, talking about national languages, at the second place, as regards the closness to Latin, there is Spanish.
Loqu, I think he's offering you to be his trusted lieutenant if you join his side.
loqu wrote:sa wulfs wrote:The nice think is that, talking about national languages, at the second place, as regards the closness to Latin, there is Spanish.
Loqu, I think he's offering you to be his trusted lieutenant if you join his side.
Oh I'm so lucky! I always dreamt of trolling internet forums discrediting Romanian, I just hate those folks and their bloody language! So sure I'll join.
linguaholic wrote:I usually eat them with ketchup (I hate mayo, plus it's not vegan), also like satésauce (salty peanut stuff). Hummus sounds great, but I don't see anybody making that available here anytime soon.
obler9 wrote:modus.irrealis wrote:I actually find comparing languages inherently interesting (no matter what nefarious purposes they might be used for), so to follow up on this, you mean something like with (all corrections welcome):
Latin: dico quid faciam / dicabam quid facerem
French: je dis ce que je fais / je disais ce que je faisais
Italian: dico che faccio / dicevo che facevo [?]
in the Romanian version would have the same verb used for "do" whatever the tense of "dico"?
Consecutio temporum of the Latin and Italian subjunctive mood
obler9 wrote:The italian translation you made is the version with the subordinate structure. But Italian has both, the INFINITIVE AND the subordinate structure in a construction like the one you show. There are both commonly used. But the infinitive is even more used. So, the right example is:
L: dico me videre te (present infinitive)
I: dico di vederti / dico di vedere te (present infinitive)
'The unorthodoxy of my approach', says Dr Posner in her Preface, 'has almost inevitably led me to say some unorthodox things.' It is not, however, its unorthodoxy (nowhere very conspicuous) which will prevent Romance linguists from recommending this paperback to their pupils, but the number of points which are muddled, misleadingly formulated, or just plain wrong.
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