On 8/17/06, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella(a)yahoo.it> wrote:
So if it substitutes letters which are not
pronounced, what are those
unpronounced letters in 'o and 'a? My guess is that they are a special
exception which are always written 'o and 'a perhaps historically having
had an official letter. If this is the case we could say the rule is:
lo + la + le (plural form) d''e also exists
A double apostrophe occurs when contraction is
made with the definite
articles, these being always written with an apostrophe.
So my further questions:
a) Is there a "full spelling" for 'o and 'a?
it is not used - you only find it in veeeery old texts. nowadays they
only use 'o, 'a and in plural form 'e
I just found 'a, 'e, and 'o on en.wiktionary. I am going to add la,
le, and lo as
alternative spellings and mark them as obsolete. Would you say this is
correct?
b) Are there
any words besides 'o and 'a which take an apostrophe even
when not part of a contraction?
yes - 'nfrumma,
'mbruglià
English Wiktionary also includes 'a = from, 'e = of, 'llustrà = to
illustrate,
'ntréllece = vivaciously, 'nzularchìa = jaundice
also there it substitutes a letter - in all cases the
substituted letter
is a vowel (as much as I have in mind now
and there's the article ll' used in front of a vowel
sorry, but things come in mind while writing and imagining sentences -
consider that I know some grammar rules, but I don't know all of them -
my Neapolitan comes from everyday use when talking with people in this
region. The few rules I know help me to write as correctly as possible
and according to Carmine who proofreads my texts they are quite well and
getting always better - during the last ones there were only some really
minor changes. If we need further, more exact information I need to find
out where I can get a grammar book - it is impossible to find it here
where I live (that might seem strange, but it is like that).
No problem. Linguists create grammars by interviewing people who speak
them and it apparently works best if these informants can't analyse their
language grammatically. We're going very well so far! (-:
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
Best, Sabine
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
--
http://linguaphile.sf.net