Talk:Eastern Lombard grammar

Eastern Lombard Grammar talk page.

Good job!

Hi Gio, what an efficiency! I can't even finish to write and you already have executed! Eastern Lombard efficiency, I would say...

The introduction you wrote for the grammar is absolutely excellent. I hope to find the time to contribute more in the next future.
Ciao, --Ninonino 18:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Articles

I added a section on the articles. Please, have a look and correct it. Plus, I ran out of examples, particularly for the plural form of the indefinite articles. For that, at the beginning I thought about adding a section about partitive, as in French, but I am not really sure about that. Now, I used this 'minimalist' but we may include a part on partitive if we know how to deal with it. --Gio' 11:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Peculiar construction

syntactic

I really like to add a part about some peculiar syntactic structure. for example, meherès, bisognerebbe in Italian, it's very interesting. Do you say that? and do you have an idea where it comes from? Or, gho gnamò de comprà la turta (I have not bought the cake yet) but literally I have yet to buy the cake (?!). And what aboutghè, in the sense of there is. It's something like hay in Spanish (but I don't know Spanish that well). and the past is ghèra?

Meherès is totally new for me. Never heard before. It is evidently a conditional mood of a verb that have lost the rest of the conjugation throughout the evolution of the language.
Gó gnamò de.. is not used in my area. I heard it from a friend from Berlingo. We would say Gó amò de comprà or Gó gnamò compràt
Ghè is absolutely consistent with the explanation we gave in the article about the -ga particle. In this case is the verb véser or better vésega instead of ìga.
Ghè can be analyzed as ga + è. If we make correspond ga to the italian ci, we obtain c'è. The same is valid for ghéra = ga + éra = c'era.
Nothing to do with Spanish hay that is a particular form of the verb to have (not to be like us). The same is for the French il y a, that also uses the verb to have. --Ninonino 13:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

lexical

I was told that in Lumezzane the bicycle is called bèsa-cagna (biscia-cagna), the bus bès·cia blö (blue beast). Probably, it is not true, do you know anything about that, or other examples?

Oh, it's absolutely true. They also call the radio ol cahitù che bajòca. Lumezzane is a real parallel univers! It would be funny to have contributor from there... eh eh. --Ninonino 13:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Great explanation for ghé, I was completely wrong. Plus, about the 'universe' Lumezzane, I'll add a part in Eastern Lombard about variation in word choice, if you agree. And if I can find some good example of meheres or ghò gnamò de... I'll put them in the article, not sure yet. And please, have a look at the personal pronouns. what do you think? can it be correct? any observation is welcome. (also because I'm starting from scratch). And what do you think of table? thumb up or down? I like them anyway--Gio' 16:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Pronouns

In the pronouns list in my opinion you are merging clitic and non-tonic pronouns.
I mean, clitic are:

me cànte
te ta càntet
lü el cànta
nóter cantóm
vóter cantìf
lur i cànta

while non-tonic are:
a mé ma pjas
a té ta pjas
a lü ga pjas
a nóter ga pjas (also: a noter ma pjas)
a vóter va pjas
a lur ga pjas

Mmmmh... I used the term non-tonic but it is evidently wrong. More investigations needed. Pronouns are a little more complicated than you stated in the article. But, it doesn't matter, we have to start from somewhere and I think this is a good basis to start. Good job anyway, Ciao, --Ninonino 19:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
P.S.:

There are also these ones:

ardàm -> guardarmi
ardàt -> guardarti
ardàl -> guardarlo
ardàga -> guardarci
ardàf -> guardarvi
ardài -> guardarli

I knew it was not that good, I tried. Now, I tried to edit and improve it. I think many things are still missing and many others are wrong. But we should start. Tell me what you think. If you have any other possible explanation, let me know, please --Gio' 09:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Gio', it was good, and now it is better. On the other hand, I keep on giving you inputs as you are really far better than me in grammatical issues. By my part, may be, I have a deeper knowledge of the language and this facilitates me in finding examples and exceptions.
I 'd like to submit to your attention this pronominal structure:
me ma sa àrde
te ta sa àrdet
lü 'l sa àrda
etc.
This is the passive form, and differently from the Italian, it uses two pronouns (is sa a pronoun actually?), three if we count also the subject one. I think this is quite peculiar for our language if I'm not wrong it is not used for other dialects of Northern Italy. More investigation needed here also. Bye. --Ninonino 13:20, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I fomne / le fomne

Oh my god! We are already in troubles! ;-)
If we take Brescian as reference, your assertion about i fomne is not true. Here the article 'i' for the feminine is completely unknown. I think that 'le' is more common and widespread than 'i': Mantuan, Cremask and the most part of Brescian speakers uses 'le'. I think you can leave your example and specify that in some areas 'le' is replaced by 'i', that it a curious feature as 'i' is masculine. --Ninonino 13:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

example: ne l'órt

In your example you used ...ne l'órt.... I changed your example because in Brescian we say ...endèl órt..., so it was no longer suitable for the rule you wanted to demonstrate. Ciao --Ninonino 13:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC) You're right but I had to find another example, though wacky: l'onghia is feminine, I was looking for a masculine one. armì is fine, i think.

Sorry, you are right, I completely missed the example as I didn't read carefully. Your current example is correct for me even if armì is not widely used here. We would prefer armèla or armilì (that also means the fifth finger, it. mignolo) but leave it this way as it is acceptable and fully understandable in our reference language. --Ninonino 19:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Demonstratives

Hi Gio, very good addings. I see you are very active these last days.
I have a remark on the demonstratives. In my area we say:

	Proximal		Distal
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Masculine	chèsto	chèsti	chèl	chèi
Feminine	chèsta	chèste	chèla	chèle

But I suggest not to delete chès·cc, if you want just add chèsti as altenative.

Also, we can say: chèsto pà ché but at the same time chèl pà ché. The meaning remaining the same in both cases and with preference for the second form.
On the contrary we cannot say chèl ché. The situation is similar to italian where one can say: Questo pane qui, Quel pane qui, questo qui but not quello qui.

I also changed the markings for the pronounce trascription as there is no phonemic schwa in Eastern Lombard (I think this is valid for the entire linguistic area, but not sure 100%). --Ninonino 11:39, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. What do you think if we continue the discussions on my user talk page, so we can write in Italian. May be just for technical issues. We can leave trace of the main decisions on this page after a previous discussion there.

I edited the part on demonstrative pronouns. Tell me what you think about this sentence: In [[Anaphor (linguistics)|pronoun resolution] (finding the referent of a pronoun), strong preference is given to animate entities rather to inanimate entities. I mean, when you say chèl là, 99 % of the times you are referring to a person and not an object. Can you find an example? Otherwise, we delete the sentence.

I replied to you about this subject in my User Talk Page. --Ninonino 08:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

References

Have a look to these links:
http://commedie-dialettali.sfera.net/ A collection of comedies in Bergamask
http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Lombard/index.html Interesting site more for western lombard, but the map of the distribution of the two main varieties is interesting and seems reliable.
http://www.atlantedl.org/brescia/feste/149cigole/merla.htm Storiella in dialetto di Cigole (interessante l'ortografia).
If I will find more interesting sites I will attach the link here. Afterwards we can filter them and if that is the case include them in the main article. --Ninonino 12:43, 19 July 2006 (UTC)