Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 June 7

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June 7

Renaissance Capitals

INRI in the abby church of Marienschloss (Rockenberg, Hesse, Germany). Abby is a prison since 1803, today juvenile prison

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cherubino (talk • contribs) 10:33, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Is there an alphabet called something like "Renaissance Capitals" or "early humanistic capitals" with a reversed N (looking like cyrillic И) in english? [1] -- Cherubino (talk) 06:30, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

That's not an alphabet, that's a typeface -- apparently with two different glyphs for N. --51.9.70.242 (talk) 07:11, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

The image is taken from here. It's a set of handwritten decorative letterforms found on a late 15th century German altarpiece, and the article does indeed describe it as "early humanistic capitals" ("Frühhumanistische Kapitalis"). If you can read German, you'll find a good explanation of the stylistic background there. Reversed "N"s seem to have occurred occasionally in this style, at least there are a few other examples in other illustrations in that article too. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:27, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps the reversed "N" may be connected with the Titulus Crucis which is preserved in Rome and is believed to be a fragment of the actual title board from the Crucifixion. The Gospels give the inscription as “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum abbreviated to INRI). The relic has part of the inscription in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, however the Greek and Latin texts are in reversed script. I realise that it doesn't explain the un-reversed "R". Alansplodge (talk) 22:59, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

die Luft scheint der Flasche zu entweichen

My native German speakers tell me that this sentence is grammatical. What concerns me is the placement of "zu", an infinitival word. As far as I am aware of German syntax, it is a Tense head. Moreover, German is head-final. So the correct pre-V2 form of the sentence should be "(dass) die Luft der Flasche entweichen zu scheint". Applying V2 should give "die Luft scheint der Flasche entweichen zu", but this is not the case.

I am aware of scrambling in German but I've never read any account where scrambling applies to non-DPs. I'm unable to find literature on scrambling leading to "zu verben" instead of "verben zu", is anyone able to point me to literature on this phenomenon? →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:51, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

The correct pre-V2 form of the sentence is "(dass) die Luft der Flasche zu entweichen scheint", for the infinitive "entweichen" gets the "zu". The verb "scheint" governs the sentence and is therefore not an infinitive form and does not get a "zu". --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 22:15, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

A simpler example would be "(Die Temperatur) (scheint) (zu fallen)" which is in English "(The temperature) (seems) (to fall)". --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 22:39, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

That's right, and that's exactly why I'm confused. Let me clarify my question:

German tense heads appear right of the verb phrase. Therefore, pre-V2 is expected to be "(dass) die Luft [_TP [_VP der Flasche entweichen] zu] scheint", but it isn't. To go off of your example, the pre-V2 form is "(dass) Die Temperatur [_TP zu [_VP fallen]] scheint", in which "zu" appears left of [_VP fallen] and not right of it, as expected: "(dass) Die Temperatur [_TP [_VP fallen] zu] scheint" .

The question is, what's going on with infinitive "zu"? →Σσς. (Sigma) 23:38, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Zu preceeds the infinitve verb in zu-constructions.[2] Rmhermen (talk) 01:47, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I can't say for sure about the German case but in many Indo-European languages TP has different behaviours with finite and non-finite verbs, and that's what this example seems like . Peter Grey (talk) 02:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

That's interesting, thanks. Could you point me to some interesting literature on that? →Σσς. (Sigma) 05:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean by "German is head-final"? In our article Head-directionality parameter#German the notion is quite different. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 19:20, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Verb and tense phrases, at least, are head-final. I wouldn't put any stock in the tree pictures on the article (or Wikipedia in general; I may bring this up at WikiProject Linguistics someday), but as far as I know there are no existing accounts of German syntax that treat tense phrases that way.[3] →Σσς. (Sigma) 03:12, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Notice that same thing is going on in English as in the German: "The gas seems to escape the bottle" -- there are two verbs in this sentence; "seems" is conjugated, so the second one, "escape," must be the infinitive: "to escape." Similarly, "die Luft scheint der Flasche zu entweichen" -- "schient" is conjugated, and "entweichen" must be the infinitive -- "zu entweichen".

If you look at Wiktionary, zu can be a preposition, particle, or adverb. In this instance, it's a particle, and the particle is used with the infinitive. See: [4]

Looking at Linguee -- which is very handy for getting a sense of real-world usage -- it's clear this is a very common construction with "scheint," as it is with the English "seems": [5] PatriciaJH (talk) 13:40, 13 June 2016 (UTC)