Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.192 November 21, 1994 1) Introduction (Jonathan Dembling) 2) Minkhe (Arn Abramson) 3) Bistu (Mikhl Herzog) 4) Addendum re red and redt = ret (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Bistu (Anno Siegel) 6) Morpheme integrity and -stu (Dovid Braun) 7) Morpheme integrity and ni(sh)to (Dovid Braun) 8) "Distinguishing" homonyms (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 23:25:14 -0500 (EST) From: bruce@ksgbbs.harvard.edu Subject: Introduction Sholem aleichem. Mayn nomen iz Jonathan Dembling un ikh bin nay tsu "Mendele". Ikh voyn in Somerville, Mass. Ikh red nor a bisl yidish - ikh lern zikh itst. Ikh red oykh geylish (fun shotland) un a bisl niderlendish un daytsh. Ikh bin zeyer gliklekh az men ken do shraybn af yidish! Tsi zaynen klasn af yidish lebn Boston? Oder andere mentshn vos veln mit mir redn? Jonathan Dembling 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 20 Nov 94 22:12:55 EST From: abramson@uconnvm.uconn.edu Subject: Minkhe I have just read my last contribution in, I think, vol.4.191. Before one of our Hebraists jumps on me, let me hasten to say that in my little table of loshn koydesh terms in Yiddish script and YIVO spelling, I left a letter out of the entry mem-nun-khes-hey for Yiddish /minkhe/ 'afternoon service.' I failed to write the final /hey/. Arn Abramson 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 20 Nov 94 23:26 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Bistu Arn Abramson: With respect to your query concerning the pre-standardization writing of "bistu", I am forwarding a message which Anno Siegel was good enough to send me. If, indeed, the practice is as early as the 15th century, the form is surely a derivative of "bis + du", however much the synchronic form "bist" plays a part in our synchronic perceptions. This doesn't address the issue of consistency in present-day practise. As an aside, note also the Litvish form "binste": "fun vanen binste?" "ikh bin fun Yehupets, un du? fun van binstE?" (or "un du fun vanen binst?") Mikhl Herzog 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 94 10:42 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Red and redt = ret Arn Abramson: Incidentally, the contrast between such pairs as red/ret which persists in Central Yiddish, illustrates stankiewicz's caution tha the presumed word-final voicing neutralization in CY is constrained by part of speech. It occurs in substantive but not in verbs and adjectives. Mikhl Herzog 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 10:05:08 +0100 From: anno4000@w172zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.d400.de Subject: Re: Bistu Since the subject came up again in Arn Abramson's article in 4.191, I'd like to share a data point. Forms like "bistu", "hastu" for "bist du", "hast du" were quite common, if not standard, in older forms of written modern German. They are, for instance, often seen in Martin Luthers writings, so I guess these forms came about at least as early as the 15th century. Other monosyllabic verbs were treated similarly, such as "weistu" for "do you know" and, strangely "wiltu" (not "wilstu") for "do you want". I can't say when these forms disappeared from high German; they still survive as "haste", "biste" etc. in some dialects, Berlin for one. Anno Siegel 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 02:38:56 EST From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: Morpheme integrity and -stu As with Arn Abramson, other pressures have prevented me from commenting on the _bistu, hostu_ riddle earlier. (I wonder if the pressures were the same?) I think there isn't anything more to be said about the -stu issue than "morpheme integrity is violated in this case" and it's probably (one of the) only ones in the system we're talkiong about (namely, that of the _Takones fun yidishn oysleyg_, commonly known as "YIVO-oysleyg"). One commonly sees the spelling _volst_ (i.e., vov-alef-lamed-samekh-tes), but the correct (according to the Takones) spelling is _voltst_ (i.e. with a final sequence of tes-samekh-tes). The former spelling reflects the actual pronounciation, which in turn reflects the rule "delete a stem-final /t/ when it is followed by the morpheme /st/". In spoken Yiddish you actually hear [volst] for orthographic _voltst_, [arbest] for orthographic _arbetst_, [trakhst] for orthographic _trakhtst_. Nevertheless, the spelling preserves the stem-final t. So too when stem-final -st meets the superlative morpheme -st; thus _dreyst_ 'bold' must be written _dreystst_ (e.g. shimen iz geven a dreyster held, nor der dreystster fun zey alemen iz geven ruvn), although the two forms are actually pronounced the same, viz. [dreyster]. With regard to the pronunciation of _redt_ vs. _ret_: I was recently told by a native speaker of English that he feels a difference in the pronunciation of the /m/ in _lamb_ and _slam_. The /m/ in the latter word, he claimed, was "softer". The intuition mentioned with reference to _redt_ and _ret_ probably falls under the same category. Dovid Braun 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 03:48:57 EST From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: Morpheme integrity and ni(sh)to Morpheme integrity is violated in _ni(sh)to'_, also. Note that this is in contrast to _ni(sh)t do_, where both words are stressed. In _ni(sh)to'_, only the second syllable can ever receive stress. Dovid Braun 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 20 Nov 94 23:26 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: "Distinguishing" homonyms Conducting Atlas interviews yields an endless supply of "mayses". In trying to elicit the gender of the word for 'border', we'd ask "vi hot geheysn di linye vos tseteylt eyn land fun a tsveytn. Normally, the definite article plus the word "grenetz" would emerge. If the question wasn't clear, we'd offer the word in English, Hebrew, or whatever. One informant insisted that the word border was "vald". After eliciting the word for 'nose', say "di nuz/nuis" we'd ask for the plural, only to hear "barinc iz dus nish geveyn. Veye hot den mer vi ayn nuis? Er hot a nuis in zi hot a nuis!. We confronted people with rhymes and homynyms--same or different? In Podolia Bessarabia, where "a"-words are frequently realized with "o" (tote, mome, vold, voser), people rendered the English sentence 'I touch the pot' as something like "ekh ti a top dem top". Asked then whether "top" and "top" were the same, the answer was invariably and emphatically, "neyn, 'ekh ti a top' iz dokh 'ekh ti a TOP', n 'a top' iz dokh 'a TOP'. Clearly differentiated, no? A reverse phenomenon, in a similar vein: You will recall the linguist's famous problem "one phoneme or two?", often illustrated by the Polish distinction between the pair "trzy" 'three' and "czy" 'whether' (Yiddish interrogative "tsi"). The teacher in my one semester of Polish at Columbia (a native speaking Pole who shall remain nameless) insisted that they were homonyms while repeating and obviously distinguishing them every time he said them. When I insisted that I could hear the difference, he defied me to take a test. When I hit the target every time, he said, in desperation "OK, I'll ask my wife". She, perhaps to her regret, sided with me. He went down claiming she couldn't be trusted because she was "too literate", she knew the difference in spelling. I don't know what her fate was, but the episode made me uncomfortable enough to keep me from returning for a second term. Mikhl Herzog ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.192 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. 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