LINGUIST List 3.105

Tue 04 Feb 1992

Disc: Nominative/Infinitive, Scandanavian Clusters

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. jack, Nominative with Infinitive
2. , Clusters

As I am not a syntactician, I am actually not the proper one to post
this, but Michael Jones of University of Essex (UK) has not (perhaps
not being a subscriber) and he would be the authority. Thus I merely
present data, and do not theorize. More information can be found in
his section in Harris and Vincent's _Romance Languages_ (Oxford U
Press 1988), his article in _TPS_86 (1988) 173-203, and the paper he
read at the Ohio State Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages 1989.
Sardinian has sentences like the following (don't distress yourself
about dialect variation, and consider the transcription to be broad,
since our eye is on syntax,not phonology):

	1. non kerjo kantare = I don't want to sing

	2. deu non kerjo kantare = I don't want to sing (Sard is pro-drop)

	3. non kerjo a kantare Maria = I don't want Mary to sing

	4. non kerjo a kantare tue = I don't want you to sing

	5. non kerjo a kantare issu = I don't want him to sing.

(note that 'tue' and 'issu' are both nominative, and note also the
complementizer 'a', unlike sentence 1. More interesting are senten-
ces like the following, where sentence 6 assumes you (tue) are sing-
ing, and sentence 7 assumes some other people are obviously singing
and you don't want them to:

	6. non kerjo a kantare = I don't want you to sing

	7. non kerjo a kantare = I don't want them to sing

Aha! Now there's pro-drop for ya!

	8. non kerjo intsultare a Maria = I don't want to insult Mary

	9. non kerjo a m'intsultare = I don't want (them) to insult me

Note also examples in M L Wagner, _La Lingua Sarda_ (Bern n.d.
381-2); Blasco Ferrer _Lingua Sarda Contemporanea_ 165; Blasco
Ferrer _Storia Linguistica della Sardegna_ 223-5. (I lack bib. data)

Enjoy them in good health!

Since a collection of examples of vowel-epenthesis in l- and r-clusters is
being built up, here is a set of examples from Proto-Scandinavian. Several
runic inscriptions,from between c. A.D. 400 and c. A.D. 675 (Krause's
dates) show unetymological a (or u or e) in l- and r-clusters (and a few
others). One plausible interpretation is that these written forms reflect
back epenthetic vowels. The examples are:

worahto < *worht- (Tune, Norway, c. 400)
arageu < *arg- (Bjoerketorp, Sweden, c. 675; Stentoften, Sweden, c. 650)
heramala(u)saR < *herm- (Stentoften)
haeramalausR < *herm (Bjoerketorp)
(w)orumalaib(a) < *worm- (Myklebostad, Norway, c. 400)
haraRaR < *hraR- (Eidsvaag, Norway, c. 475)
harabanaR < *hrabn- (Jaersberg, Sweden, c. 525)
waritu < *writ- (Jaersberg)
warait < *wrait (Istaby, Sweden, c. 625)
bariuti < *briut- (Stentoften)
barutR < *briut- (Bjoerketorp)
hedera < *hedr- (Stentoften)
-wolaf-, -wulaf- < *wulf- (Gummarp, Sweden, c. 600, Istaby, Stentoften)
felaheka < *felh- (Stentoften)
falahak < *falh- (Bjoerketorp)
halaiban < *hlaib- (Tune)
hagala < *hagl-(?) (Kragehul, Denmark, c. 525)
gisalas < *gisl- (Kragehul)
AfatR < *aftR (Istaby)

Helge Dyvik
Department of Linguistics and Phonetics
University of Bergen
Sydnesplass 9 Tel 47-5-212261
N-5007 Bergen, Norway E-mail dyvikuib.no