LINGUIST List 3.132

Mon 10 Feb 1992

Disc: Is, is; But; Parsing challenge

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Directory

1. , 3.121 Is, is, But, Parsing Challenge
2. Herb Stahlke, Re: 3.121 Is, is, But, Parsing Challenge
3. Zvi Gilbert, A postposed "but" dialect
4. JEROEN WIEDENHOF, Re: parsing challenge - to be or not to bee

(1) "All's I know" comes, I would argue, from *"All as I know", with
the relative "as" which is found in many dialects of this beautiful
language.

(2) I would really question William Marslen-Wilson's statement that
in Dutch "Eer was was was was was is."
is "quite acceptable". This how stories like the Eskimo words for
snow, the folk etymology of "ergative" from Greek "ergon", and
other old linguists' tales get started. It is acceptable in
the same way that English "That that that that that that precedes follows it
is not surprising" is acceptable.

Message 2: Re: 3.121 Is, is, But, Parsing Challenge

All's I know is that "All's I know" sounds a bit like the "How's come"
variant of "How come" that one hears in this part of the Midwest.
How's come that 's seems to show up after a focus element?

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University

FYI:

A postposed "but" dialect occurs in Mordechai Richler's novels about
1950s Jewish Montreal, including _St. Urbain's Horseman_ and _Duddy
Kravitz_. As I recall (and I don't have the book in front of me) it
seemed to be a general negative intensifier....

Any comments from those who 1) are native speakers of this dialect, or
2) have read the book more recently than me?

--Zvi zgilbertepas.utoronto.ca

As no doubt many subscribers have observed, Stip's poem is based on the
homonomy of Dutch _was_ 'wax' and _was_ 'was'. The contextual bee
conditions the reader to interpret the 3rd, 4th and 5th _was_'s in the
question as 'wax':
 Wat was was eer was was was?
 what was wax before wax wax was
 'What was wax before wax was wax?'
The bee interprets the question as
 Wat was was eer was was was?
 what was was before was was was
 'What was was before was was was?'
and answers accordingly:
 Eer was was was[,] was was is
 before was was was was was is
 'Before was was was, was was is'
Note that the translation has five occurrences of English _was_.

Jeroen Wiedenhof