On Mon, 09 Jun 2003 22:57:02 +0000, Glen Gordon <
glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>Concerning the supposed uselessness of the locative
>for the noun "father":
>>And how often do you need "in the father"?
>
>The locative doesn't always mean "in". It may be used
>for a wide variety of nuances. It could just as well
>mean "at father" or "next to father" or "beside father".
That's my point: the pre-PIE case in *-e(i)/*-é(i) is likely to have had a
very broad range, including "for the father, to the father". Given that HD
nouns are animate, there would have been a statiscally high proportion of
*-éi endings with dative function, and relatively few *-éi's with locative
function. Conversely, the ending (after zero grade) *-i would have been
used more often in locative function, and rarely in dative function. Some
languages, like Basque or Spanish, do not normally allow local
cases/prepositions with animate nouns: one has to use a genitive
construction such as "in the [house] of X", cf. also English "I'm going to
John's". This would explain how the dative (< HD *-éi) and locative (<
PD/ST *-i) eventually split. The next step was the formation of analogical
HD locatives (*p&2trí, *p&téri) and PD datives (*pedéi, *pédei).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...