Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.178 January 2, 1997 1) Slavic influence on Yiddish syntax (Miriam Isaacs) 2) Slavic influence on Yiddish syntax (Hugh Denman) 3) Grine verem (Sema Chaimovitz Menora) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 13:02:09 -0500 (EST) From: miriamis@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Subject: Slavic influence on Yiddish syntax In reply to Hugh Denman's remarks [6.176] on the reflexive in Yiddish being limited to 'zikh' it should be remembered that this is not true of all dialects of Yiddish, and in some dialects the reflexive does agree with the subject. Miriam Isaacs 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 15:35:03 +0100 (MET) From: h_denman@maier.vol.at Subject: Slavic influence on Yiddish syntax I have a sinking feeling that on this topic we may be beginning to bore our fellow Mendelyaner by talking too much about German and in excessively technical detail. I also feel that Ellen has already formulated a consensus we can all agree on, at least provisionally, in the last paragraph of her most recent communication [6,177. 3]. However, since I have been asked some specific questions by both Joachim and Ellen [6,177. 2 & 3], I'll try and answer them as briefly as I can. It was never my intention to claim that the sequence of tenses rules in German and the Romance languages are identical. The German rules are at once more fluid and more complex. What is important in this context is simply that in German there ARE rules that, at the very least, PERMIT using a more remote tense in indirect discourse and in older and more literary German REQUIRE it, whereas in Yiddish and Slavic the ONLY rule is that the tenses of direct and indirect discourse are identical: "Ich schreibe einen Brief." - Er sagte, er schriebe (schreibe) einen Brief. "Ich habe einen Brief geschrieben." - Er sagte, er haette (habe) einen Brief geschrieben. "Ikh shrayb a briv." - Er hot gezogt, az er shraybt a briv. "Ikh hob geshribn a briv." - Er hot gezogt, az er hot geshribn a briv. "Pisze list." - On powiedzal, ze pisze list. "Napisalem list" - On powiedzal, ze napisal list. (Once again I apologise for the loss of diacritics: the e of the first-person "pisze" should, of course, be imagined as having an ogonek etc., etc.) Similarly Ellen's "Er hot mir gezogt, az er vet avekforn." will in German be: "Er sagte mir, er werde wegfahren." As in Yiddish, this does not tell us whether he has done so yet or not, but unlike both Yiddish and Slavic it does not replicate the tense (or, in this case, mood) of the direct speech. On the other hand, one could say (somewhat as in Ellen's American English examples): "Er hat mir gesagt, dass er wegfahren wird." which is somewhat colloquial, but more precise in that one then knows that he is still here. And I don't, of course, dispute for a moment that Joachim's 'Er hat gesagt, dass er es nicht kann' is perfectly acceptable in a contemporary colloquial style. Unlike Ellen, I can't claim to be a "modern syntactician", which perhaps explains why I have some difficulty with metaphyical distinctions between "surface phenomenon" and "underlying level". Ellen enquires about the meaning of "Er sagte mir, dass er krank ist." It does mean: "He told me that he was (and still is) sick." and does not mean: "He told me that he was (but no longer is) sick." (which would be [in the equivalent register] "..., dass er krank war."). "Interestingly the various alternative possibilites, including "..., er sei krank (gewesen)." and "..., er waere krank (gewesen)." not only belong to differing stylistic registers but also convey mounting degrees of scepticism as to the veracity of the reported indisposition. I'm afraid that in my present rural retreat I don't have to hand a copy of Luther's Bible (which is, incidentally, not that easy to find, since it is very different from the so-called Luther-Bibel now used in Lutheran churches) so it is difficult for me check my distinct recollection that at least the 1534 version has word order that is at times reminiscent of Yiddish. However, the "Kleine Enzyklopaedie Deutsche Sprache" (Leipzig, 1983) helpfully illustrates my point by quoting Matth. 18:10 first from Luther's 1522 NT translation: "Sehet zu, das yhr nicht verachtet yemand von disen kleynen", and then from his revised 1546 translation of both testaments: "Sehet zu, das yhr nicht jemand von diesen Kleinen verachtet", and we see the change taking place before our eyes. At the same time it must be said that even today reality is much more complex than the school grammars would have us believe. Thus there is a phenomenon that Germanists often refer to as "Ausklammerung", a kind of common-sense recidivism that puts parts of the sentence (especially if somewhat verbose) back into the position following the past participle, the dependent infinitive or the separable prefix. E.g.: "Vieles hatte Glum schon gesehen auf seinem Weg von seiner Heimat bis ueber den Rhein hinweg" (Heinrich Boell). This tendency is even stronger in German dialects and in everyday conversation. It is my suspicion that this represents the real "underlying" German word-order, smothered in the standard literary language from the 17th to 19th centuries but constantly resurfacing in more natural contexts and, of course, reflected in Yiddish that was never subject to German academism (at least in matters such as these). I have every sympathy with Mendelyaner who find the above somewhat tedious. I didn't realise where my earlier comments were leading. On the other hand, it seemed impolite to ignore questions put directly to me. Hugh Denman London 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 16:45:17 -0500 From: lights4607@aol.com Subject: Grine verem I really opened up a can of worms with my original request for the origins of "grine verem." And I thank everyone for their interesting postings on this issue. With reference to Hugh Denman's concern about why "grine" modifies worms and gall,(vol. 6 177), it _would_ be interesting to know why "grine" varem is used. As to gal (gall), I understand that it does have a greenish color to it, as opposed to the yellow that H. Denman suggests. Sema Chaimovitz Menora ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.178