A thread for examples regarding grammaticalization
- Thread starter Bestiola
- Start date
I thought I would find @Pacifica here on Arabic, where are you???
In several Arabic dialects we have ما هو شيء (mā huwa shay’ = this is nothing’) became مش (mish) which is used as a negation with no awareness that it is a contraction of a previous sentence.
أنا مش جعان = Ana mish ga’ān = I - not - hungry.
The future is a similar case. From present participle رايح (rayiḣ = going), it became راح (rāh) then رح (rah) then simply ح (h) and is used before verbs as a future tense marker.
أنت حتسافر= enta ha-tsāfer = you will travel.
In Levantine dialects there is also عمل (’amila = to do, to make) which was used as an intensive present participle عمّال (’ammāl) to express ongoing action. It is still used in Egyptian this way, and you can just put it in front of any verb to say "keep doing sth". in Levantine Arabic it was even shortened to عم (’am) and indicates the present : شو عم تعمل = shū ’am te’mel = what - [present] - you do = what are you doing?
In several Arabic dialects we have ما هو شيء (mā huwa shay’ = this is nothing’) became مش (mish) which is used as a negation with no awareness that it is a contraction of a previous sentence.
أنا مش جعان = Ana mish ga’ān = I - not - hungry.
The future is a similar case. From present participle رايح (rayiḣ = going), it became راح (rāh) then رح (rah) then simply ح (h) and is used before verbs as a future tense marker.
أنت حتسافر= enta ha-tsāfer = you will travel.
In Levantine dialects there is also عمل (’amila = to do, to make) which was used as an intensive present participle عمّال (’ammāl) to express ongoing action. It is still used in Egyptian this way, and you can just put it in front of any verb to say "keep doing sth". in Levantine Arabic it was even shortened to عم (’am) and indicates the present : شو عم تعمل = shū ’am te’mel = what - [present] - you do = what are you doing?
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And Portuguese qualquer (from qual quer) meaning, any, some. Catalan qualque, Galiacian calquera.
There's also Spanish siquiera. From si quiera, meaning "if only". Portuguese sequer "at least, even".
To be honest I'm not even sure I've ever heard the Portuguese one (even though the corresponding words in the other languages you've mentioned are quite common). The Wiktionary says it's archaic in Brazilian Portuguese, but I'd say it's the same in European PT. Always weird how related languages discard or at least tend to avoid expressions/words while others retain them!
Wow, thanks for that!! I'll have to find a more trustworthy dictionary it seems.
You're welcome, but I don't think you need to change dictionaries lol I mean, the entry was probably written by a BP speakers who didn't know about the exact situation in EP, but not a big deal anyway. That said, I asked my parents about it, and they indeed told me they had never that word, so it's at the very least very uncommon even in Portugal.
The thing is, I wanted to explore the grammaticalization in Latin and romance languages, and at first I thought that Romanian ori/veri variants were unique...until that wiktionary with its Spanish (and related) entries proved them wrong, and I realised it's a common theme in romance languages. But then you disapproved Wiktionary
(thanks for that) So I gotta find something more reliable.
A video I posted on the French thread reminded me of that one: the French word for "today", aujourd'hui, comes from au jour d'hui, with jour meaning "day", and hui coming from Latin hodiē, itself coming from hōc diē. Hence, aujourd'hui originally meant "on the day of this day", but there's an even more redundant turn of phrase that can be heard sometimes: au jour d'aujourd'hui, which you could render as "on the day of the day of this day".
(the video I mentioned made me think of that because the guy pronounces aujourd'hui as [uʒuʁdɥi] instead of [oʒuʁdɥi]. I don't think I'd ever noticed that variant; [oʒɔʁdɥi] is a much more common "mistake")
(the video I mentioned made me think of that because the guy pronounces aujourd'hui as [uʒuʁdɥi] instead of [oʒuʁdɥi]. I don't think I'd ever noticed that variant; [oʒɔʁdɥi] is a much more common "mistake")
That is awesome, thanks
It reminded me of the Spanish construction conmigo which originated in quite a redundant phrase - it comes from cum me cum, the same thing with contigo - cum te cum etc.
Yeah I always like those redundant ones! A lot of linguistic phenomena seem to be explainable by this need to reinforce words/expressions, but sometimes it ends up a bit awkward.
I experienced this as specifically Egyptian. No Najdi would say this; in fact, when they want to imitate an Egyptian talking, mish and pronouncing jim as g are their go-to techniques.
Which dialect uses ha to mark the future? That's new to me. Pensinular Arabs use the Classical structure.