Comments

Subscribe to the comments RSS feed.

Comment #1 posted on 2022-02-28 14:07:36 by publius

"Have" constructions

For most speakers of Western European languages, whether more (eg German) or less (eg English) inflected, Latin serves as the paradigm for inflected languages. Of course it's not anything like as commonly taught in schools anymore, but it's still there in the background, serving as the model against which the grammar of the vernacular has traditionally been constructed. For the Sclavonic languages, such as Russian, the paradigm is Classical Greek.

In Latin, there is of course a verb "habere" meaning "to have" (as well as "tenere", "to hold"), but it is common to use the copula or being-verb with the dative. In other words, "I have it" or "it belongs to me" is often expressed with "id mihi est", quasi-literally translated into English as "it to-me is".

Interestingly, I have read that, in many languages, whatever "have" constructions exist tend to be taken over by the verb meaning "hold" or "grasp". An obvious example is the way that, in Spanish for example, the verb derived from "tenere" is used to mean "hold", while the Latin "habere" has essentially vanished. English cognates such as "tenure", "tenancy", and so on also show a movement from the concrete to the abstract.

Leave Comment

Note to Verbose Commenters
If you can't fit everything you want to say in the comment below then you really should record a response show instead.

Note to Spammers
All comments are moderated. All links are checked by humans. We strip out all html. Feel free to record a show about yourself, or your industry, or any other topic we may find interesting. We also check shows for spam :).