Kentel
Regular Member
I've been wondering lately about the origins of 2 strange features, both relatively typical to western IE languages (not only though, I'll say a word about that later) : the compound tenses and the definite article.
Let's begin with the article : you find it in Celtic, in Germanic, in Romance (but not in Latin...) and in Greek. In its independant form (ART + NOUN), you find it also in Semitic (Hebrew and Arabic at least) and in Coptic.
In its most synthetic form it doesn't give any information about genre nor about number :
- English "the", being used for masculine, feminine, singular and plural
- Dutch "de", same as in English. The genre however is indicated for the neutral form (N.) : het, not for the feminine, as in Scandinavian.
- Brittonic : Breton ar, Welsh yr, Cornish an (+ their respective mutated forms)
- Semitic : Arabic ال and Hebrew אל ("al" for both, + their respective mutated forms). There does not seem to be any article in the other semitic languages, but I'm not definitive about that.
In a more developped form it accounts for number
- Gaelic an (sing.) / na (plur.)
In the most developped forms it accounts for both number and genre
Romance :
- Spanish el, la, los, las
- Portuguese o, a, os, as - Italian lo/il, la, le/gli
- French le, la, les
- and the very uncommon Sardinian su, sa, sos(sus), sas.
Germanic :
- German : der, die, das (N.), die (+ declensions)
- Old English se, so, þæt (N.),þā (+ declensions)
- Gothic : sa, so, þata (N.), þais, þos, þo (N.)
Greek:
- Ancient Greek : ο, η, το (N) οι αι ται (N) - sorry I have not the spirits nor the accents
- Modern Greek : ο η το (N) οι ται (N)
Coptic:
- Π, Τ, Ν (N.), ΝΙ/ΝΕΝ (+ mutated forms, + strong forms indicating the degree of definiteness).
Historically : The Romance article comes from the Latin demonstrative ille (except for Sardinian where it comes from the demonstrative ipse). The Coptic article comes from the Egyptian demonstrative series pa, ta, na (more accurately p', t', n'). Hence, there seem to be an evolution from a demonstrative to an article. We'll see that a similar process occured in Macedonian and Bulgarian, although Slavic is a family which has basically no definite article.
And finally the question here is : Why did a definite article emerged suddenly in some languages and not in others (there's no articles in Slavic nor in Sanskrit f.ex., so it's obviously not an IE feature). Is it an INNOVATION or an INHERITANCE ? and if it is an inheritance, from where ?
I didn't talk about the article in Romanian, Albanian, Macedonian and Scandinavian on purpose, it will be the subject of my next post.
Let's begin with the article : you find it in Celtic, in Germanic, in Romance (but not in Latin...) and in Greek. In its independant form (ART + NOUN), you find it also in Semitic (Hebrew and Arabic at least) and in Coptic.
In its most synthetic form it doesn't give any information about genre nor about number :
- English "the", being used for masculine, feminine, singular and plural
- Dutch "de", same as in English. The genre however is indicated for the neutral form (N.) : het, not for the feminine, as in Scandinavian.
- Brittonic : Breton ar, Welsh yr, Cornish an (+ their respective mutated forms)
- Semitic : Arabic ال and Hebrew אל ("al" for both, + their respective mutated forms). There does not seem to be any article in the other semitic languages, but I'm not definitive about that.
In a more developped form it accounts for number
- Gaelic an (sing.) / na (plur.)
In the most developped forms it accounts for both number and genre
Romance :
- Spanish el, la, los, las
- Portuguese o, a, os, as - Italian lo/il, la, le/gli
- French le, la, les
- and the very uncommon Sardinian su, sa, sos(sus), sas.
Germanic :
- German : der, die, das (N.), die (+ declensions)
- Old English se, so, þæt (N.),þā (+ declensions)
- Gothic : sa, so, þata (N.), þais, þos, þo (N.)
Greek:
- Ancient Greek : ο, η, το (N) οι αι ται (N) - sorry I have not the spirits nor the accents
- Modern Greek : ο η το (N) οι ται (N)
Coptic:
- Π, Τ, Ν (N.), ΝΙ/ΝΕΝ (+ mutated forms, + strong forms indicating the degree of definiteness).
Historically : The Romance article comes from the Latin demonstrative ille (except for Sardinian where it comes from the demonstrative ipse). The Coptic article comes from the Egyptian demonstrative series pa, ta, na (more accurately p', t', n'). Hence, there seem to be an evolution from a demonstrative to an article. We'll see that a similar process occured in Macedonian and Bulgarian, although Slavic is a family which has basically no definite article.
And finally the question here is : Why did a definite article emerged suddenly in some languages and not in others (there's no articles in Slavic nor in Sanskrit f.ex., so it's obviously not an IE feature). Is it an INNOVATION or an INHERITANCE ? and if it is an inheritance, from where ?
I didn't talk about the article in Romanian, Albanian, Macedonian and Scandinavian on purpose, it will be the subject of my next post.
etrified:
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