Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:07 pm

I would have added to this thread yesterday, but then I was lured into specifying the languages I have studied with more or less success during the last 60 years or so, and that took all the time I had allotted to the forum. Instead I finished the Polish text about the Devon period plus its smaller companion about the ancestors of the blue fish that survived for 400 million years by hiding between the rocks near the Comoros. Funnily enough i also watched a program on TV5 from Canada ("Kebec", from Québec and spoken in glorious Québecqois) where they briefly mentioned a related critter named Tiktaalit, which I also have mentioned here - it was like a fourlegged fish, and it too lived during the Devon period. But there are more texts in Polish in the Devonian collection of printouts, and I'll work on them later today.

POL: Wczoraj skończyłem studiować tekst o okresie dewonu, ale kolekcja tekstów zawiera więcej elementów. Istnieją dwa artykuły o wulkanach. Pierwsza opowiada o Samali na indonezyjskiej wyspie Lombok, która eksplodowała w 1257 roku (pamiętam, że kiedyś miał sąsiada, który eksplodował tak gwałtownie, że teraz zupełnie zniknął - tyle że to było dawno temu). Drugi dotyczy pozostałości po wulkanach w Polsce, które od dawna nie wybuchają. Trzeci artykuł opowiada o korpusie niebieskim Cruithne (nazwanym tak na cześć plemienia celtyckiego), który w quizie BBC-a QI został ogłoszony drugim księżycem Ziemi. To obiekt, który zachowuje się jak pies na spacerze ze swoim panem. Zwykle po prostu trzyma się blisko mistrza, ale czasami biega wokół niego. Ale za każdym razem, gdy okrąża Ziemię, okrąża Słońce 770 razy – więc jest to po prostu ekscentryczna asteroida, która dzieli orbitę ziemską, a nie księżyc.

Cruithne.jpg

Yesterday I also finished my Icelandic book about viking gods and heros, but I think I'll pick out some excerpts from it for closer scrutiny with a dictionary. Instead of Odin and Thor and their gang I have picked a magazine in Portuguese to lull me into sleep this evening - more about that later. And apart from that I'll try to get through materials in a couple of languages more this afternoon - but I have not yet decided which ones that will be. And maybe I should also mention that I am listening right now to the last minutes of my collection of music by Johann Sebastian Bach - more than 1000 minutes all in all (he is the composer that I have most music from, followed by Beethoven). And of course my TV is switched on, but in silent mode with subtitles. Right now it's about airplanes falling down for various mysterious reasons, but until ten minutes ago some Norwegian rescue people speaking a funny kind of English were pulling heavy trucks up from snow-filled Norwegian ditches because those lorries continued to drive around on sinuous icy mountain roads in the dark in spite of snow storms and defective snow chains (or sometimes no snow chains at all, and then the drivers are fined by the Norwegian police).

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Feb 01, 2023 5:30 pm

Yesterday I wrote that I intended to study some more Polish texts, and I did -the two articles about volcanoes (leaving Cruithne for later). I also wrote that I would study a few more languages, but I was not sure yet which ones. And in a way I also did - I decided to add one more column with each around 30 words to each of my 30 wordlists in different languages. And yesterday I got through the Germanic and the Romance languages plus Latin and Greek and Albanian, and then I started doing the Slavic languages- but after Bulgarian and Serbian it was close to midnight, so I have to do the last seven languages this evening (Slovak, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Bahasa Indonesia and Esperanto) - which shouldn't be totally impossible. (EDIT: And it wasn't - i finished the last list at 23:28 exactly, and now I have to find something to read)

By the way, while studying the volcanoes of Lombok and Poland I also read some stuff on the internet, and I found a list on the English Wikipedia with the largest explosions caused by supervolcanoes, and the one that pumped most stuff out in recent times was Mt.Toba (2,000–13,200 km3) - also in Indonesia. No. 2 on that particular list was one in New Brunswick, Flat Landing Brook Formation, but that was as far back as 466 mio. years ago. However effusive volcanoes have surpassed the explosive ones many times in sheer output volume, and the largest in recent times among these was the Siberian traps in Siberia, that basically put an end to the Paleozoic era because it killed most existing animals and plants on the planet - apart from the amazing little Lystrosaurus which I mentioned here a few weeks ago.

IND: Dengan banyaknya gunung berapi yang terletak di Indonesia, mungkin saja dapat disusun suatu kumpulan teks kajian dalam Bahasa Indonesia tentang vulkanism di negara tersebut.

Finally I mentioned that I had finished the Nordic mythology and instead had placed a magazine in Portuguese on the chair at my bed. And what happened? Well, I read the whole thing - and even though I do have more magazines in Portuguese in my collection I may run out of stuff to read if this continues! I must be more parsimoneous with my magazines! The one in question (called "Terra") was from 2002, and I bought it in Rio de Janeiro during a trip from Asuncion in Paraguy to Iguaçu in Argentina and Brazil, which I finished of with a few days in Rio. Back then I couldn't yet speak Portuguese so I mostly used lousy Spanish mixed with English. But I had a very pleasant stay there.

POR: Os sadhus na Índia são homens santos que tentam obter discernimento fazendo coisas que normalmente são completamente proibidas - como andar nu (em um país onde é proibido beijar pessoas do sexo oposto na rua) e se sujar com as cinzas das piras funerárias. Na maioria dao tempo eles são sentados meditando em cavernas rochosas onde ninguém os vê, mas às vezes eles se reúnem aos milhões. O artigo afirma com aborrecimento que agora também existem sadhus falsos que descobriram que você pode viver mendigando (o que pressupõe evidentemente que sejam visíveis). E então não ajuda muito que eles tenham a garantia de renascer como algo muito nojento - como por exemplo um turista com óculos escuros e câmera no pescoço.

NO: Det er morsomt å se Norge omtalt som et eksotisk, om enn veldig kaldt land. Men eg er enig med artikkelforfatterne: de norske fjordene er veldig fine. Og det finns korallrev i dem – det er ikkje ofte én tenker på det.

IT: Anche 'Italia è anche un paese lontano ed esotico quando si vede il mondo dal Brasile. La città di Genova era un'importante città commerciale (che produsse marinai come il signore Colombo), ed è sempre interessante passeggiare per una città talmente vecchia e ricca - ma Genova non era davvero un'attrazione turistica. Ma per attirare più visitatori i Genovesi hanno deciso di costruire un enorme acquario presso il porto, ed io l'ho ho visitato nel 2003. All'interno dell'acquario c'è per esempio una intera nave immersa nell'acqua, alla quale si puoi vedere come le forme di vita invadono un carcassa - e una visita completa del luogo dovrebbe durare ore. Di più c'è un museo antartico accanto e altre cose da vedere, come il tunnel pedonale riccamente illustrato di cui mostro qui sotto una parte. Purtroppo non ho visitato la Liguria dopo 2003, ma credo che varrebbe la pena tornarci.

F2619b02_Genova tunnel.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:01 am

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time trying to revive my Irish with the help of Harry Potter I, HP agus an Órchloch. For me Irish has been an on-and-off experience. I have studied it intensively during some rather limited periods, but otherwise let it rest in peace. And each time it is af if I have to start from scratch, but after a few days some rudiments return. This time I have decided to focu on the sentence structure, where Irish is very different from any other language I have ever worked with. My very helpful Collins dictionary has sometimes articles about a single headword with scores of idiomatic expressions which cannot possibly be predicted - you have to learn them.

I have planned to do a special 'idiom list' where I focus strictly on words with interminably long articles in the dictionary (I did something similar using a collection of French idioms not long ago). In addition to this there are two other kinds of problematic words which are best studied with a grammar (or my green sheets from earlier study campaigns) : inflected prepositions and the few, but very hetereogene irregular verbs. And then I use two note stands, one carrying the translation and the other the original English version. As usual I copy the target text by hand to slow me down - however because the emphasis now is on (re)adapting to the way Irish 'thinks' I use hyperliteral translation in my copy, i.e. translations into a mixture of Danish and English which follows the structures of the Irish text as closely as possible. I see this as a way of modelling my way of thinking with the weird Irish structures the basis - which is better than trying to produce pretty sentences in for instance Danish. Actually the English version alrady has pretty sentences supplied by J.K.Rowling personally - and the good thing about using the Potter books is that she always has been rather strict with her translators, so in essence you get a more loyal translation than with some other literary projects.

After the Irish Orchloch I continued to Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum in Latin, which was a totally different experience because I basically can understand the Latin text without help - but there are nevertheless elements which didn't occur in my classical study texts. For instance on page 38 (where Hzrrius is using the transportation pyre for the first time) you see the following passage: (...) intus quadrulae duplices panis larido inserto tumultuabantur. OK,what is it then that rummages around side the intestine of poor Harry while he is swirlin around in a well of green fire? Well, bacon sandwiches of course (which he had ingested as breakfast in the house of the Weasleys). I don't remember that expression from Cicero or Caesar, but it shouldn't surprise me if the ancient Romans sometimes had placed a roasted slice of pig meat between two slices of inedible bread - they certainly had the ingredients - and then they may have had a word for the thing. But if they had ever used it in writing I'm sure the learned translator (P.Needham) would have known about it.

I have three other Potters in translation and may use some of them in the same way later (Serbian, Russian and Portuguese plus no. 1 in Ancient Greek), but have somehow missed to acquire the last two in relevant languages - if I do a travel to a relevant country I just might add them to the collection.

And after that I did Cruithne in Polish and one more 'first travel abroad' in Romanian as goodnight reading.

This morning I first watched some QI with Stephen Fry in English, but after that an excellent program "Qué animal" in Spanish from TVE, ...

SP: ... donde primero hubo una discusión sobre las formas en que las hormigas descubren a sus congéneres muertos. No, no huelen el olor de la muerte, sino la ausencia del delicado olor de una hormiga viva. Luego hablaron sobre insectos comedores de excrementos como pro ejemplo los escarabajos, y fue algo especial escuchar a una señora decir 'excremento' en casi cada oración.

IT: In questo momento sto guardando un programma italiano su RaiUno (eccezionalmente con il sonoro), chiamato "Buongiorno Benessere". Hanno trascorso parte del tempo in onda discutendo di stitichezza e rimedi per evitare questa condizione umiliante (yogurt ecc., ma soprattutto PIÙ verdure) e poi hanno discusso del colore dell'urina come strumento diagnostico (nel Medioevo si dice che i dottori devono assaggiare la pipì dei pazienti), ma verso la fine del programma hanno anche fatto riferimento alla lettura in lingue straniere come metodo valido per ritardare il graduale estinguersi delle nostre cellule cerebrali.

So at the end it didn't all end up in a heap of poo..

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby luke » Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:09 am

Iversen wrote:SP: ... donde primero hubo una discusión sobre las formas en que las hormigas descubren a sus congéneres muertos. No, no huelen el olor de la muerte, sino la ausencia del delicado olor de una hormiga viva.

That is a very pretty sentiment. Thank you for sharing it.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Feb 06, 2023 8:04 pm

I did NOT spend all my time since the last message studying languages. Saturday went fairly well - I made bilingual text collections in Polish, Ukrainian and Albanian because I had finished all those I had. In the Polish set the longest text is about the Silurian (the geological era before the Devonian), and I also made one about the supercontinent Gondwana that comprised at least half of the land area of the Earth when it was largest. In Brisbane I actually visited an indoor institution called Gondwana that tried to remind us about its existence - but I have read that this place has been closed since my visit in 1994. I have also chosen something totally different, namely a Wikipedia biography about the obscure composer Feliks Nowowiejski (PO: którą pierwszy raz spotkałem na płycie z polską muzyką organową, którą kupiłem w latach 70-tych) - and just for fun I have chosen Modern Greek for the translation of that article.

The Ukrainian collection comprises an article about biodiversity, something about a Natural History museum in Lviv and an article about the Shawm, a double reed instrument which is called "skalmeje" in Danish, "Schalmei" in German and "chalemie" in French (there is a related instrument "chalumeau", which also is the name of an organ register). And in Ukrainian it is "Шоломі́я" (Sholomiya) or "шолома́йка" (sholomajka"). But from there I veered off into reading about all kinds of shrill reed instruments from the renaissance and before in a number of languages, but without saving anything. However I finally realized that my Albanian has been undeservedly neglected because I didn't have anything ready for studying. The problem is that the Albanian Wikipedia is fairly thin, and it didn't have articles about topics like obscure reed instruments from the renaissance, so I just found one about the Illyrians, which may or may not be the forefathers of the modern Albanians. I also found one about the "Illyri proprie dicti", which apparently was a name used by Roman authors - and then the question is of course who the non-properly named Illyrians were. I finally added an article about the bronze age, one about Moravia and one about a region called Anamorava to this collection - so now I don't have any excuse left for not studying Albanian too.

Skalmeja (från den svenska Wikipedia).jpg

Yesterday, well, ahem. I took a long walk, I washed the dishes (no dishwasher in this house) and I made 3 glasses of 'syltetøj' (jam) with berries from the garden (plums, 'solstik'* and blackcurrants). In the evening I started to do a Polish wordlist based on my recent study articles, but got disctracted, and then I just read up to page 41 page in my goodnight book, "Historia concisa de Portugal" by senhor Saraiva (I ended around the time of first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques), and after that I fell asleep.
* a mixture of blackcurrants and gooseberries, - I have forgotten what it is called in English

And this pattern continued today: I made more marmelade, this time based on a somewhat unusual combination of fruits and berries. I had bought some "clementines", and the problem is that the supermarkets often sell citrus fruits that aren't proper clementines (which should be sweet, seedless and easy to peel) - and these were hard to peel and had seeds and tasted more like mandarins. So I took the decision to squeeze the juice out of them and add a banana and an apple and a lot of sugar plus an emulgator to the concoction, and then I cooked the lot and put it into marmalade glasses for later consumption. The end result can probably not be bought in any supermarket, but I think it will be delicious. And then I did some more Polish wordlists, but somehow got distracted again :roll: - and this time this forum was to blame.

I had seen in the thread about "hace+ time" that the position of the inverted question mark in Spanish is debatable, and then I started to look for examples. First I checked a magazine called "Muy Historia" which I bought in Spain in 2015 - but it had very few relevant examples. OK, in the one and only interview there were lots of questions, but not many outside that interview, and the few I found were generally banal. Science and history magazines are more likely to tell you things than to ask questions.

The question is what you can put before or after a question surrounded by question marks (¿ and ?) - and in particular whether you have a substantivish thingy in extraposition before the ¿ So I dropped the magazine when I had reached page 48, and then I searched my shelves for literature in Spanish - but no, I have some literary books in other languages, and I'm sure that I also had some in Spanish, but now I can't find them.

Therefore I went to the Gutenberg Project and downloaded a free novel called "La raza - el árbol de la ciencia" by Pio Bareja. And it had lots of questions. I found many of the types "Además, ¿a quién le importe?" and " Y los demás, ¿qué han hecho?--preguntó Andrés", but also some with a substantival thingy before the question mark, like "Estas antipatías de gente maleante ¿no están admirablemente representadas en ese antagonismo irreductible del bacilo de pus azul con la bacteridia carbuncosa?" or "Pero esa moral ¿no será la defensa de la raza que vive en una tierra pobre y de pocos recursos?". But sometimes the question mark comes before the thing that could have been before it, as in "¿Y, mientras tanto, abstenerse de vivir, de afirmar?" and "¿eso qué importa?".

Quite generally the examples couldn't choque me, but I found some with "pero" that for some reason piqued my curiosity. Sometimes "pero" is before the question mark as in "pero ¿toda esta tienda es de usted? - pregunté Andrés, sometimes it's after as in "¿Pero eso se puede saber con anterioridad?" or "¿Pero a ti qué te importa lo que hacen los demás?". I think there is a difference in meaning, but it is hard to pinpoint. Pero ¿who cares?

EDIT: last news (SP): He hallado mis libros literarios en español - estaban ocultados detrás una papelera demasiado llena.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Feb 07, 2023 11:11 pm

I actually wrote the rant below for Zelda's log, but found that it had become a bit too long to put into another learners log, so I'll put it here instead:


I like to read grammars, but I try to reformulate the content as short lists over the things I have to learn NOW, and if something isn't on those lists then I can learn it later. Below I have summarized the main things I would note down if I had to learn about mode in French:

In main clauses you use the indicative (except in certain fixed expressions and when the subjunctive replaces an imperative ("Vive la République")

In interrogative subordinates (those that would be wh-questions in English) you use the indicative ("je ne sais pas qui vient"), and also in independent 'relative' clauses ("qui se tait, consent").

In noun clauses (which we called 'phrase complétive" in my study years and I still think of them as such) you generally use the subjunctive if they are prepositioned - even if something is certain ("Que la Lune soit si loin me plait - elle pue").
However if they are postpositioned you have to take several factors into account, like the function of the que-clause - if it is the subject of the whole caboodle (or the 'real' subject in a cleft construction) there is a strong tendency to use the subjunctive, but it can be overruled if something is absolutely certain ("Il est évident que la Lune est très loin d'ici"). If on the other hand the clause is used as an object or regimen or whatever then the tendency is to use the indicative, but this can be overruled if something is doubtful ("je doute que la Lune soit faite de rocquefort") - and it is almost certainly overruled with verbs that express a wish ("je préfère qu'on construise nos lunes futures de fromage frais") or expressions of feelings ("je regrette que notre Lune soit faite de fromage du tout").

And then a weird little rule: "il semble" is combined with the subjunctive, whereas "il me semble" and "il paraît" take the indicative .. :roll:

There is indicative in parenthetical relative clauses, i.e. those that don't restrict the extension of the substantival thingy their relative pronoun is referring to ("nous avons une seule Lune, qui est fait de fromage bleue") - whereas it is a matter of semantics what mode you have to use in those that do (the restrictive ones). Wishful thinking or expressions of feeling or negations mostly lead to the use of the subjunctive ("je préférerait un Lune qui soit fait de fromage", "je ne connais pas de lune qui soit faite entièrement de camembert"), but else you use the indicative.

With adverbial clauses the main rule is that you use the indicative after "si" even though this from a semantic point of view may seem idiotic - but if you extend the si-clause with a que-clause then the latter will take the subjunctive, haha: "mais si la lune est fait de fromage et que ce ne soit pas du camembert, alors elle doit être construite de rocquefort"). But in conditional clauses with other conjunctions you use the subjunctive ("pourvu que la Lune soit laissée loin de nous, je ne me plaindrai pas de son odeur").

Adverbial clauses that indicate time or reason mostly take the indicative (except after "avant que", "jusqu'à ce que", "non pas que" and a few others), but else it's the subjunctive that dominates.

Kunst108.JPG

I never intended this to be a complete overview over mode in French grammar (and there may even be dubious points in it), but the idea is that if you can squeeze a grammatical topic down to something of this length (or even shorter, depending on the topic), then you have a chance of learning it - and by all means keep the paper for later reference. If not then you are not ready to learn that part of the grammar - at least by classical study, but maybe by osmosis. To learn anything through studies you have to cut it down to a manageable size and systematize it, even if that means that there are things you have to leave for later.

And then I noted one thing more, namely that I still think in grammar using the French words and notions I learned during my study years in the 70s - and that includes the changes in the vocabulary and descriptions which I introduced while I wrote my own French 'mini-grammar' (and reused when I wrote my final dissertation). So whatever language I discuss I think 'phrase complétive' instead of 'noun phrase', I think "antécédent" and "relation anaphorique" when I think about relative clauses (what DO you call the thing that a relative pronoun refers to in English?), and no - I don't think "phrase relative indépendante' because I renamed them "phrases independentes" (or 'uafhængige bisætninger' in Danish) because they simply aren't relative clauses at all - among other things because their pronoun is an interrogative - but you can transform them into relative constructions ("qui tait, consent"--> "celui qui tait, consent"). So it's a problem for me to write about grammar in English because I simply don't use the terms used by Anglophone grammarians inside my head!

You can discuss the limits - for instance I have to think "aorist" in Greek and Bulgarian because there ain't such a thing in French. Likewise I had to introduce 'connectors' into my grammatical vocabulary when I started to study Indonesian - but then I found that the word could be reused for Albanian, albeit for inflected forms there. And I had also to change my thoughts about relative constructions when I met Irish - at least one kind there makes be feel like I'm surfing on a big wawe, and the important thing there now is not to look down. That being said, having a uniform grammatical stock of words and notions across languages is one of the things that saves me from becoming totally raving mad.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby tractor » Wed Feb 08, 2023 8:32 am

It’s called antecedent in English, I think.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Feb 08, 2023 10:48 am

So the word antecedent exists in English, and it's actually something I should have remembered while I wrote the passage above, I have looked up what the almighty Wikipedia has to say about it, and I found that it also operates with something called a "postcedent" when the relative pronoun comes before the thing it refers to. And then I see that the article about relative clauses mentions something it calls a "free relative clause (or fused relative)" where "the relative clause itself takes the place of an argument in the matrix clause". Well, that's the the thing I call an independent clause in the rant above, and my reason for this is the one I have given above, namely that the pronoun isn't a relative pronoun and that there is an alternative construction where it definitely is. I first got the idea from an Italian grammar written by a Danish linguist named Spore, and then I announced my point of view in a grammatical essay which I got accepted as part of my exam in French.

FR: Je viens de mentionner deux types phrases relatives: les parenthétiques et les restrictives, mais il y en a en effet un troisième type: les phrases relatives predicatives. Et dans ma tête j'ai toujours utilisé le mot français 'prédicat' (et non pas le substantif 'predicative' of the Anglophones). Il y en a au moins trois types: prédicat de sujet, prédicat d'objet et... le reste, dont les prédicats soi-disant libres. Et ces prédicats peuvent être adjectivales, comme souvent avec des verbes qui indique une transformation de sorte (je peins la table rouge), mais on peut aussi rencontrer des phrases relatives dans le même rôle.Pour clarifier de quoi il s'agit je cite ici quelques examples du livre "Fransk Syntaks" (p.59):

je les entends qui gueulent (Céline)
Le voilà qui s'inquiète (Charles-Roux)
(..) je suis là qui frisonne à la fenêtre (Bazin)


Ce qui est intéressant ici c'est que la phrase subordonnée ici ne donne seulement un renseigment simple sur l'antécédent, mais l'implique dans une sorte d'action qu'on pourrait de diverses manières incluir dans la partie du 'matrix' qui se trouve au-dehors de la phrase subordonnée - ou l'on pourrait transformer l'ensemble dans une construction relative ordinaire:

je les entends gueuler (ou j'entends qu'il y en a qui gueulent)
on voit q'il s'inquiète
c'est moi qui frisonne à la fenêtre

EN: And now I ought to write in Irish, but even though I have spent a few hours recently trying to revive my sub-zero A Irish, I'll just cheat and write in English. And the reason is that I would like to mention that there are two types of relative clauses in Irish: the direct ones (which are plain sailing - there is an antecent and a relative pronoun inside a subordinate clause as we are used to) - but there are also indirect ones which instead of a relative pronoun has what could be called a "resumptive"pronoun or particle of sorts ('résomptif' in French according to Wikipedia). The English Wikipedia has this slightly condescending definition: "Resumptive pronouns have been described as "ways of salvaging a sentence that a speaker has started without realizing that it is impossible or at least difficult to finish it grammatically", And in another article there are some examples with hyperliteral translations, including this one:

an fear a raibh a dheirfiúr san ospidéal "the man whose sister was in the hospital" (lit. "the man that his sister was in the hospital")

and further on:

Sometimes a direct relative clause can be ambiguous in meaning, leaving unclear if the relative is accusative or nominative:

an sagart a phóg an bhean "the priest who kissed the woman" or "the priest whom the woman kissed"

(so maybe they kissed each other?). There are other languages where such 'extra' pronouns are used (Romanian is mentioned), and at the bottom it's a phenomenon that recalls the use of extrapositions in languages like French. The special thing is that in a language like Irish these 'extra' pronouns have invaded a subordinate clause, and the grammarians have no choice than to accept it. A French or English or Danish teacher would have severely rebuked any pupil who wrote anything similar, but yes, they exist also in those languages as despised underground phenomena. In Danish it would for instance not be unusual to say "manden som at kom med vores pizza" (the man who that came with our pizza) - everyone does it, but few will admit it.

For more information about about this topic, see the middle of A.Murelli's article "Relative Constructions in European Languages: A Look at Non-Standard" (or his book from 2011, which I haven't read).

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Feb 08, 2023 2:56 pm

Iversen wrote:So the word antecedent exists in English, and it's actually something I should have remembered while I wrote the passage above, I have looked up what the almighty Wikipedia has to say about it, and I found that it also operates with something called a "postcedent" when the relative pronoun comes before the thing it refers to.
Agreed that 'antecedent' is the proper word. I have never heard of the term 'postcedent' (but I'm not saying it isn't a real thing and a real term ;) .
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Feb 08, 2023 4:13 pm

When I wrote my final dissertation in 1980 I proposed to use the word "postcedent" about the not-yet-existing (or not-defined) entity which an interrogative pronoun refers to (et c'est quoi? C'est très simple - "quoi" refers to "the not-yet-existing (or not-defined) entity, which the interrogative pronoun refers to" :P ).

But it is actually more logical to reserve it for the thing a relative pronoun refers to in case that thing is only occurs after the pronoun. And I have noticed that there are sources that propose the word cataphoric (instead of anaphoric) for references where the pro-thing comes before the thing it refers to. But maybe we don't need special words for that situation at all - after all everything can see in which direction the relation goes, and then you don't need two separate sets of words. Sometimes you understand things better when you don't have to learn a lot of words for them..

As for the demonstrative pronouns the situation is slightly different: the referenced entity here is normally supposed to be known already, either from the text or from the context (which can be something in the physical surroundings). The main exception from this is found in cleft sentences: "c'est fou ce qu'ils discutent la grammaire française ici!"
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