Philip Newton ([info]pne) wrote,
@ 2008-09-12 10:29:00
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Entry tags:amy

Amy and the passive

Amy has an interesting passive construction in her German: she uses the participle but leaves out the auxiliary verb.

An example from this morning: "Ich will nicht angezogen!" ("I don't want dressed!").

I suppose it's not all that different from "This car needs washed", with similar elision of the auxiliary, and which occurs in the speech of native speakers from some areas.


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[info]conuly
2008-09-12 01:14 pm UTC (link)
I suppose it's not all that different from "This car needs washed", with similar elision of the auxiliary, and which occurs in the speech of native speakers from some areas.

And it's a trait in English around where the Pennsylvania Dutch (who, of course, speak German) live, too!

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[info]elgrande
2008-09-12 02:09 pm UTC (link)
But I don't think you can leave out infinitives like that in German. But there is "gehören + participle" to mean "ought to be + participle".

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[info]conuly
2008-09-12 04:02 pm UTC (link)
They don't, as I understand, speak German like anybody in Germany does.

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[info]dampscribbler
2008-09-12 09:49 pm UTC (link)
"This car needs washed" is a construction that has always made me crazy. It's never occurred to me to wonder where the heck it came from.

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