Conversation started Jul 22, 2015 at 19:14.
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
Jul 22, 2015 19:14
Went the Day Well?
Went the Day Well? is a 1942 British war film adapted from a story by Graham Greene and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. It was produced by Michael Balcon of Ealing Studios and served as unofficial propaganda for the war effort. It tells of how an English village is taken over by Nazi paratroopers. It reflects the greatest potential nightmare of many Britons of the time, although the threat of German invasion had largely receded by that point. (Germany's planned invasion, Operation Sea Lion, had been indefinitely postponed.) It includes the first major role of Thora Hird, and one of the last of...
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Oh, archaic!
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
@snailboat Yes, Germanic!
inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M
inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M
The went well day?
Well went day the?
Anonymous
Well, Present-Day English is Germanic
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
nods
"Went the day well" is nathless too Germanic for Present-Day English.
Anonymous
Jul 22, 2015 19:18
Well, English lost its V2.
Anonymous
Is nathless an obsolete spelling of a pronunciation of nonetheless?
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
@snailboat yep (0:
A nice word!
Anonymous
The other Germanic languages retain their V2.
Anonymous
And subject-verb inversion is generally a property of V2 languages.
Anonymous
English has still got it, but in the much restricted form of subject-auxiliary inversion.
Anonymous
Jul 22, 2015 19:20
English is pretty unusual for a Germanic language.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
@snailboat See, it's becoming more and more Thai-like. :P
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
nods
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
Through simplification. :-)
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
(0:
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Yes, English has been losing its inflectional morphology for over a thousand years
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
Jul 22, 2015 19:26
There must be an opposing trend in action, or else all languages would've been ubersimple by now.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
nods
Anonymous
Though the loss of subject-verb inversion is a somewhat different topic
Anonymous
In Old English, all sorts of verbs could invert.
Anonymous
In Middle English, subject-verb inversion started the long process of being lost.
Anonymous
In Early Modern English, it was mostly restricted to auxiliaries and unaccusatives.
Anonymous
Jul 22, 2015 19:28
In Present-Day English, it's pretty much just auxiliaries, outside of fossilized expressions.
Anonymous
The rise of do-support, the reanalysis of -n't as an inflectional affix, the restriction of inversion to auxiliaries―I wonder if these can reasonably be called simplification or not
Anonymous
I think languages do simplify over time, but I think new complexity pops up in different areas as they do.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
It could be if we think of -n't as a unit, not a word.
Anonymous
Well, it's an affix, not a word.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
2 hours ago, by Damkerng T.
If we always use did for the past tense, and think of -ing as another word, then Thai and English tenses and aspects are pretty much similar.
Anonymous
Jul 22, 2015 19:31
(Unless you consider affixes to be words, I guess. :-)
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
Yep! :D
Thai also has a similar contraction ผม-ไม่-ได้-ทำ [me-not-did-do] (I didn't do it), ไม่ (pronounced "mai") can be reduced to มะ (pronounced "ma", could be a very short "a" vowel) in casual speech.
But no one writes ผม-มะ-ได้-ทำ.
Anonymous
Well, -n't isn't simply a phonologically reduced form of the independent word not...
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
@DamkerngT. Wow!
Anonymous
> She does not like ice cream.
> Does she not like ice cream?　←　inversion
> *Does shen't like ice cream?　←　contraction
>
> She does not like ice cream.
> She doesn't like ice cream.　←　contraction
> Doesn't she like ice cream?　←　inversion
CopperKettle
CopperKettle
Such conciseness. (0: "a"
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
Jul 22, 2015 19:36
@CopperKettle Yes. I blame it on Sanskrit. :P
In Sanskrit, there is something we call "half an /a/".
Anonymous
It's demonstrably part of the auxiliary.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
@snailboat nods -- Syntactically, English is still more precise.
I think the inversion of full and contracted alternatives in English is another gotcha for a lot of learners.
Anonymous
Well, more precisely, we could say
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
If someone writes "Does not she like it?", chances are their first language is an Asian one.
Anonymous
do has negative forms: do, does, don't, doesn't
Anonymous
Jul 22, 2015 19:42
@DamkerngT. Chances are they've been taught that doesn't is the contracted form of does not, and therefore they think the two are interchangeable. Sadly, this is false.
Anonymous
I've met speakers of a number of non-Asian L1s who make the same mistake.
Anonymous
Italian, for example.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
nods -- I'm not sure, but I think I haven't seen many-- oh!
Anonymous
It's an understandable mistake if you're taught that it's just the contracted form.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
nods
Anonymous
Jul 22, 2015 19:43
You might think that you can "uncontract" it.
Anonymous
But if you're taught that do has negative forms:
Anonymous
> She does not like it.
> Does she not like it?
>
> She does not like it.
> She doesn't like it.
> Doesn't she like it?
Anonymous
Then you understand that doesn't is a single word, an auxiliary, which changes places with she
Anonymous
It's a negative auxiliary.
 
Conversation ended Jul 22, 2015 at 19:45.