Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 117 November 27, 1991 1) Query (Aren Abramson) 2) Nazalization (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Judjekhe/judgeke (Mikhl Herzog) 4) Negative concord (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 13:39:59 EST From: Aren Abramson Subject: Cotton-maker The members of our Yiddish reading group at the University of Connecticut would like to know the origin or the folklore underlying the use of vatenmakher 'cotton-maker' in a curse. We came across it today in our read- ing of Sholem Aleichem's story hayntige kinder. Tevye the dairyman says to his horse, "khapt dikh der vatenmakher," after the horse has raced downhill and turned the wagon over. What is so dire about being taken away by the cotton- maker? Aren 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 02:23 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.113 The nasalization question gets more and more interesting. Does anyone have access to the Israeli research project (the name escapes me) which recorded (is recording) the reading traditions of the many eydoth? Shlomo Morag (HU Jerusalem) should be able to help with comparative evidence. Noyekh: Mendele needs a secretary to collate all this material under topical headings (or do you have a computer program that does it). Great stuff! Mikhl. [Zogt Noyekh: take gerekht, ober vu gefint zikh aza program?] 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 02:28 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.114 Ellen: It has to be judgeKHE! It's just NOT judgeKE. Mikhl. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 08:42:24 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.116 robert hoberman's notes on negative concord in modern hebrew are really interesting! one of my main interests is how languages influence each other and i didn't know about this at all. yes, if biblical hebrew didn't have negative concord, then a yiddish provenance for negative concord in modern hebrew seems very possible. do you happen to know if (uneducated) yemenites have negative concord in their hebrew too? one little difference between yiddish and the hebrew system you describe is in: >(Note that /shum yeled/ is really negative: Who ate latkes? >Shum yeled. 'No child.') i think in yiddish it would be 'keyn kind nisht', not just 'keyn kind'. here yiddish differs from french and, i think, the slavic languages, which don't have the 'not' when it's just a noun phrase, not a whole clause. i'm not sure about bavarian german on this. but: >Further: /SHUM yeled AF paam LO >akhal levivot be-SHUM mesiba/ 'No child ever ate latkes at >any party.' Or, Have you every been to Eilat? Af paam lo. >'Never, keyn mol nisht.' i take it 'af' is a negative word? if so, then af paam lo would be like the yiddish, with both the negative quantifier/determiner (af?/keyn) and the negation word (lo/nisht), different from, say, french, which just uses 'jamais', not '*jamais pas', when that's the whole utterance. you've certainly inspired a very nice term paper topic for some lucky student next term! a dank. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.117