Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.168 December 15, 1993 1) A little more on word order (Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Dec 14 15:59:29 1993 From: Roslyn Kalifowicz-Waletzky <0005943838@mcimail.com> Subject: Re: a little more on word order All those who disagree with the Bermans, please forgive me for taking a little more time to embellish on a point about word order to any other lurking beginners still confused by all this arguing. Since I got an expected "unfriendly" letter from one Berman (among several thank you notes), I figure they may be other people out there who also still don't get it. Yesterday's letter from Marnen Laibow-Koser proves that. So bear with me while I reproduce an edited copy of parts of my personal response to Jason Berman. "I spent the time writing that Mendele essay, not only because the argument has created too much confusion and needless animosity (on- and off-line), but because I recognize that ayngeshpartkayt. It reminds of the dead-end conclusions I sometimes fell into at the beginning of my Yiddish teaching career (1971) when I tried to fit my dogmatic reading of Weinreich's stated rules to my own native Yiddish, because I began teaching Yiddish a year and a half before I formally studied Yiddish linguistics. (That as well as this whole discussion here would make an interesting psycholinguistic study.) Then I finally got to question my teacher Mordkhe Shaechter about terms like "always", "sometimes", "only in some dialects", etc. in "College Yiddish". So my writing is partly out of sympathy for a kind of blind aynkeshpartkayt about some linguistic issue I remember once falling into myself in the early 1970's. The issue here is really a semantic quibble, but of the type that completely thwarts correct classification and the nature of two very important categories at hand, namely, what is correct Yiddish and what isn't. You are obviously not a linguist and that's perfectly o.k. I never primarily identify myself as one despite my degree. But I will try to reclarify one small point again. My husband tells me that, for at least the last 30 years, linguists have understood that what is out of the norm is not necessarily outside of grammar. Bill Labov's milestone study about Black English being a non-standard rather than a substandard dialect is what honed this point home. Although we are comparing 2 very different things, the argument here reminds me of that substandard vs. non-standard issue. Your statement that verb-first sentences are out of the norm is correct. The verb position is without question out of the norm and that is what makes it special, different or, to use a linguistic term. "marked". But what you don't understand is that the difference between such sentences and normal word order sentences is not random. When you claim that it is ungrammatical, you imply that the word order is random. The verb-first sentences cited to you still conform to very strict rules. And those rules are part of the repertoire available within the normal, regular rules of Yiddish grammar. An out of the norm Yiddish sentence can have scores of possible variations (look at lesson 11 and see how you can jumble all the sentence units). But the point is that of all possible combinations, only one is possible. The verb is limited to only one alternate position and everything else in that sentence, e.g., pronouns, subject phrase, object, nisht, etc., still has to follow the rules of normal word order. Those rules are very strict and no "poetic license" is allowed here. Poetic license in poetry, for example, gives you many more variations than mere inverted word order. On a continuum of grammatical rules, inverted word order is to be found right next to regular word order and poetic license is on the opposite end. While poetic license may include inverted word order, it isn't limited to it. Poetic license may operate outside of Yiddish grammar. Perhaps putting it this way may help. As a category, inverted word order is an overlapping category that falls into the category of Yiddish grammar and into the category of poetic license. While poetic license may borrow inverted word order, inverted word order resides within the category of Yiddish grammar and not in the category of poetic license. You have often called use of this word order a deviation from natural speech and as such it is/should be considered creativity. I say yes; this linguistic feature is itself without doubt a very skillful, clever, and creative narrative and rhetorical device. Its use, however, is so commonplace in both colloquial speech and narrative forms that it alone does not render discourse "artistic" or "creative". I DO understand your concern about Yiddish students no longer taking normal word order seriously when they see the kind of argument many of us are making here. But I would not make it if I thought a beginner student could not handle hearing about it at the point of Lesson 11 with the proper explantion. The fact is that there are more permissible types of verb-first constructions than imperatives and questions. Producing these kinds of sentences in their CORRECT CONTEXT is more difficult than you realize, but I assure you that you could recognize incorrect word order from the grammatically correct verb-first sentences that we are talking about. I would not teach this use to first-year students but I would not hesitate to point it out either at the proper occasion. BTW: Although he has long left linguistics, my husband is still considered THE expert on Yiddish syntax. In fact, I was recently told that the whole reading list for a course on Yiddish syntax at Hebrew U. 2 years ago consisted of one item-- his "Topicalization" article. He has looked over everything I have written on this topic on Mendele, and he has corrected very little. Nu, ikh hob geton mayns un mer ken ikh nisht. -------------------------------- I just read in a TV listing that there is going to be a program about the history of Yiddish tonight on PBS-Channel 13 at 8:00 PM New York time. Check you time slots. Reyzl ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.168 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files