Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.165 December 26, 1996 1) Slavic influences on Yiddish syntax (Ellen Prince) 2) Slavic influences on Yiddish syntax (Joachim Neugroschel) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 13:13:29 EST From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: Slavic influences on Yiddish syntax arnie kuzmack (6.164) asks why the following aren't examples of slavic influence on yiddish syntax: 1. The use of zikh for first and second persons as well as third. 2. The near disappearance of perfect tenses in Yiddish. re _zikh_, i would count that as a lexical or morphological influence. think of 'syntax' as the constraints on the particular order and configuration of *word classes*. the actual words that those word classes are realized by would be matters of the *lexicon* or the *morphology*, not the syntax. re the 'near disappearance of perfect tenses', i must be missing something as i'm stumped as to why that would be a slavic influence at *any* level -- slavic (at least russian) in fact expresses past time by a perfect/preterite tense (_on znal/skazal_ 'he knew/said'). what exactly did you have in mind? is it perhaps the case that polish or ukrainian uses a present perfect to express past time? what i do believe *is* a slavic influence with respect to tense is the change from the germanic 'sequence of tense' system, where the time of speaking remains the reference point for all the tenses in the sentence, to the slavic type, where the time of each clause becomes the reference point for the time of the clauses embedded in it, e.g. english/old yiddish: he said he WAS sick (at time of his speaking) he said he HAD BEEN sick (before speaking) he said on sunday that he WOULD COME yesterday. modern yiddish/slavic: er hot gezogt az er IZ krank (at time of speaking) er hot gezogt az er IZ GEVEN krank (before speaking) zuntik hot er gezogt az er VET KUMEN nekhtn. this change i would consider *semantic* -- the *germanic forms* remained but lost their *germanic meanings* and came to be associated instead with *slavic meanings*. now, i do believe that there is a slavic-inspired change in *form* of the yiddish pluperfect, the one that gives us the invariant _gehat_ in what's left of the pluperfect (e.g. _er iz GEHAT avekgegangen_, from an earlier _er iz GEVEN avekgegangen_) -- i suspect this was brought about by the sharp drop in frequency of pluperfects after the above semantic change -- so the kid didn't hear enough pluperfects to figure out the 'right' analysis. but this, if true, would be a very indirect influence and does not result in a slavic *form* in yiddish. ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 14:04:12 -0500 (EST) From: achim1@cris.com Subject: Slavic influences on Yiddish syntax In regard to the question of Slavic influences on Yiddish syntax, Arnie Kuzmack (6,164) posits two possibilities: 1. The extension of the reflexive pronoun "zikh" to all persons singular and plural (and, I might add, to both the dative and the accusative). 2. The alleged loss of the German "perfect" tense. On the basis of linguistic evidence, I would have to disagree with both notions. in regard to the first idea, the extension of "zikh" is an issue in the lexicon, not in the syntax, since this replacement of the other set of reflexive prounouns (mikh/mir; dikh/dir, etc.) altered only the word, but not the word order. "Ikh dermon zikh, ikh dermon mikh"--either way, the reflexive pronoun is in the same position. Furthermore, the extension process actually began in German (although the Slavic surroundings may have further encouraged it in Yiddish): contrary to earlier stages of German, late medieval German began exclusively using "sich" in the third person--both singular and plural, both dative and accusative (but not genitive). That is still the situation in modern German, which retains the older reflexive pronouns in the first and second persons, singular and plural, dative and accusative. As for the Yiddish extension of "zikh" to all persons and cases and to both numbers, we'd have to pinpoint whether it already existed in Western Yiddish before eastward migration. If the extension originated in Eastern Europe, then, as I have said, the Slavic influence _may_ have encouraged a development that actually originated in medieval German. In regard to the second idea, the alleged "loss of perfect tenses": German has no perfect(ive) or imperfect(ive) tenses--nor has it ever had any. The preterite ("Ich ging" = I went) may be misnomered "Perfektiv(um)" (a misleading term from Latin and French grammar), but its function is both perfect and imperfect--like all other German tenses. The preterite pretty much vanished from spoken High German (and by then from Yiddish) by the 1450s. It then re-entered High German when Low German speakers took over the High German literary tongue and (re)introduced the preterite, as a bookish hypercorrection, into spoken German. Today, even highly educated south German speakers (including Austrians and Swiss) use only the composed past in their speech ("Ich bin gegangen"= I have gone, I went), and sometimes misuse these two past tenses in their writings, partly through hypercorrections (check, for instance the diaries of Swiss playwright Max Frisch). Since perfective Slavic tenses have one-word forms (Russian: "Ya napisal" + "I wrote") the Slavic influence might have actually _encouraged_ the retention of a "one-word Yiddish tense"--but it didn't. The issue of "aspects"--i.e. perfective, imperfective--in Yiddish is very intricate and may point to a _semantic_ but not a _syntactical_ source in Slavic. However, even this development began in German and is still prevalent today: "Ich komme" = "I come"; "Ich komme an" = "I arrive". The Yiddish "aspects", which include many such prefixed verbs, can differ from German equivalents--but then they also differ widely from Slavic equivalents--which may, however, have given Yiddish speakers a different kind of sensitivity to aspects. Whatever use they may have in Yiddish does not quite overlap with their use in medieval German or in the Slavic languages. One final note about the loss of one-word tenses: Middle High German formed a pluperfect by adding the prefix "ge-" to the preterite: "Ich sanc" = "I sang"; "ich gesanc" = "I had sung." This tense did not make it into modern German or into Yiddish, although both languages still affix a "ge-" to certain past participles. In my translation of Kafka's _Metamorphosis and Other Stories_ (Scribner's, also out in paperback), I discuss the problems of translating tenses, which are intertwined with syntax in very specific narrative modes. Joachim Neugroschel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.165