Subject: Re: Englishistic

From: "Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2000 18:25:28 -0000

--- In [email-masked], Robin <robin@B...> wrote:
> Ivan A Derzhanski wrote:
> > 
> > Robin Turner wrote:
> 
> > 
> > > Turkish (also Altaic) is also different.
> > 
> > Why `also Altaic'? Hungarian is Uralic, not Altaic.
> 
> Oops! I must have been carrying over from the old (an invalid)
> "Ural-Altaic" category.
> > 
> > > "Still" (as in continuing) is "hala" (should be a circumflex
> > > on the first "a" , IIRC);
> > 
> > Should be a circumflex on both _a_. This suffices to label the
word
> > as a non-Turkish one; in fact it is Arabic, borrowed via Persian,
and
> > meant `now, presently' before developing the meaning of `still'.
> > 
> Makes an interesting contrast with "artIk", then. 
> 
> > > (e.g. "daha gelmedi" - "he/she/it hasn't come yet",
> > > in contrast to "hala gelmedi" - "he/she/it _still_ hasn't
come").
> > 
> > I'd be curious to hear you discuss the difference between these
two.
> > Jorge and I are native speakers of languages in which `still not'
is
> > the only way of saying `not yet', and here you talk of a contrast.
> 
> In the first case there seems to be no, or weak, implication that
the
> event should have happened by now. For example, you can say in
English
> "The film hasn't started yet", or in turkish "Film daha bas~lamadI"
> without implying that it should have started - maybe you are
pointing
> out that the film starts at 21:00 and it is only 20:55. With
"still"
> and "ha^la^", however, I think there is some implication of
lateness.

Thanks, from this discussion I first got the sense for the contrast
of English "not yet" and "still not", I wasn't aware of this contrast 
at all, nor in other languages (mentioned by Ivan). Yet, now I see
that e.g. German and Hungarian indeed are having this contrast 
like Turkish "daha/h&acirc;l&acirc;": it's "noch (nicht)/noch immer
(nicht)" and "még/még mindig" (=still always), "még nem 
(sem)/még mindig nem (sem)" (=still always not).

.aulun.