Linguistic Question: Why don't Romance languages have declensions?

True, but it wouldn't surprise me if an Arabic origin reinforced an existing language-internal development.
Then it would have appeared in regions and dialects with longer and more important contacts with Arabian language.
More importantly, Andalusian dialect knew a different evolution, preferring to use glottal "h".

An arab influence that appeared in the North, bypassing Andalusia?

(By the way, I made a mistake. It appeared in the XVIIth century, not XVth. Mea culpa.
A that long evolution, absent in outer hispanic speeches as ladino, dosen't strike me as showing an obvious arabian influence.)

The craziest idea I've heard along those lines is that the Galician-Portuguese personal infinitive developed under Hebrew influence
Didn't the existance of personal infinitive predate the XVth century?
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
It seems to me, as a Semitist, to be so logical as not to necessitate contact influence from Hebrew or Arabic or whatever. I guess the more mysterious question is why more IE languages don't do this.
 
Interestingly, perhaps, for the discussion: Dutch lost its declensions quite recently, so there may be more ideas on why they were lost - which might help figure out why it might've happened elsewhere.

English and Alsatian also lost their declensions, so it may be due to an influence of French. Apparently Bavarian doesn't have declensions in nouns either which could also be explained by influence of Romance language.
 
It seems to me, as a Semitist, to be so logical as not to necessitate contact influence from Hebrew or Arabic or whatever. I guess the more mysterious question is why more IE languages don't do this.

I can't speak of all, but the use of an accolated word or personal pronoum in romance languages (as Italian, Spanish or Old French) doesn't make it necessary.
Conoscerlui, Descendre li, etc.
 
Interestingly, perhaps, for the discussion: Dutch lost its declensions quite recently, so there may be more ideas on why they were lost - which might help figure out why it might've happened elsewhere.
That's not entirely accurate; declensions haven't been used by many people for centuries. It's mostly a class thing, with the lack of regard to cases steadily creeping upward along the social ladder.

That said, there are a lot of fixed expressions that make use of the old declension system (especially in regards to articles), and legalese is still full of archaic terms. That includes the 'locative', sometimes when the supreme court refers things known or opinions held by it ('te onzent' sounds so much more classy than 'bij ons'); this 'locative' is itself one of the weirdest things, since it and it's relatives 'mijnent' and 'dijnent' are dative versions of possessives. The real Germanic locative had been absorbed into the dative for millennia.

Dutch is actually really weird. Compared to other Germanic languages it's quite conservative (no Invaeonic vowels, High German consonants, Nordic umlauts) but it has it's own weird innovations like dropping the D between vowels and even worse terminal devoicing than Gothic. Re-inventing locatives, d-dropping, what kind of weird people does that?
 
That's not entirely accurate; declensions haven't been used by many people for centuries. It's mostly a class thing, with the lack of regard to cases steadily creeping upward along the social ladder.

That said, there are a lot of fixed expressions that make use of the old declension system (especially in regards to articles), and legalese is still full of archaic terms. That includes the 'locative', sometimes when the supreme court refers things known or opinions held by it ('te onzent' sounds so much more classy than 'bij ons'); this 'locative' is itself one of the weirdest things, since it and it's relatives 'mijnent' and 'dijnent' are dative versions of possessives. The real Germanic locative had been absorbed into the dative for millennia.

Dutch is actually really weird. Compared to other Germanic languages it's quite conservative (no Invaeonic vowels, High German consonants, Nordic umlauts) but it has it's own weird innovations like dropping the D between vowels and even worse terminal devoicing than Gothic. Re-inventing locatives, d-dropping, what kind of weird people does that?

Does Afrikaans do the same, or has the grammar diverged significantly from Dutch?
 
@avernite, it has nothing to do with those consonants alone either. "Kill 'em", "let's stiff 'em over the bill", etc. It works regardless of ANY preceding consonant.

It works after vowels too. Threw 'em, saw 'em, see 'em all sound good to my ears. The Google N-gram lists see 'em and see em with much higher counts than book 'em and book em.

Subpoena 'em and amortize 'em don't appear in Google's collection, but I wouldn't put it past a lawyer or accountant to use these when casually talking shop with their friends.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
True, situations within which it might occur are imaginable. I guess a better observation is that it 'em is a bound form and never occurs freely.
Person 1: I gave it all away.
Person 2: Who'd you give it to?
Person 1: Them.

Person 1: I gave it all away.
Person 2: Who'd you give it to?
Person 1: 'Em.​
Consequently, its use is a lot more restricted than them.
 
I have always understood them as vos/nos+otros (meaning "others") mirroring the Italian colloquial form "noialtri/voialtri" of the same formation. (An English rough parallel would be "y'all" I guess). But this is only an educated guess.

And a correct one. Most western Romance languages have this construction. In addition to those mentioned, there's the Catalan "nos-/vosaltres" and the French "nous-/vous-autres." In metropolitan French, this construct is generally only used when distinguishing or describing different groups as a whole. "Nous-autres français" means basically "we Frenchmen" as a distinct group. In North American French, however, nous-/vous-aut'es, even eux-aut'es (as least here in Louisiana), are much more commonly used, serving as emphatic pronouns for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person plurals.
 
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