Re: double time signature problem

[Wols Lists]

On 14/11/17 16:50, Karlin High wrote:
> And I just learned something there:
> 
> "Der Hund hat den Mann gebissen" and
> "Den Mann hat der Hund gebissen"
> both mean "The dog has bitten the man".
> 
> I knew the Russian language had that word-order feature/bug, but didn't
> realize German did too. My knowledge of German is mostly limited to a
> Schwäbisch-Pfälzisch dialect filtered through 12 generations in America.

This is actually a *normal* feature of most languages. English is
actually very unusual in that nouns, for the most part, do not visibly
decline (that is - the form used remains the same regardless of whether
the noun is subject, object, dative, whatever. The only visible change
is the addition of 's for the genitive).

"der Hund" means "the dog (subject)", and "den Mann" means "the man
(object)", so it's perfectly clear who bit whom, regardless of where the
word is in the sentence.

You can get confusion, because in German they decline the word "the",
and combined with a noun that changes in the right way, you might get it
all ambiguous.

It's the same with gender - and that can also be confusing especially
when making a diminutive. "Die Frau" (feminine), "Das Fraulein"
(neuter). "Die Mad", "Das Madchen" likewise. Again, here English is very
unusual because words do not have a gender (the objects they refer to
may, but that's different ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol