I've heard, as an explanation for noun inflection in
Indo-European languages, that the case endings were
once separate words, a kind of adverbs or
postpositions, that have merged with the noun. If this
is true, then why are the case endings of the same
case so different from each other in plural and
singular (and in different declinations)? Wouldn't
that have resulted in a system like in Finnish, where
case endings are the same in plural and singular?
Compare Finnish talo-ssa (locative singular) and
talo-i-ssa (locative plural) with the large number of
forms in Proto-Indo-European: dative singular *-ei,
dative plural *-bhyos; locative *-i, plural *-su etc.
It's hard to believe that *-ei and *-bhyos have
developed out of the same word. Other inflecting
languages, like Finnish or Inuit (Eskimo), have much
more "regular" case systems than Indo-European and
there are no declensions (several sets of endings for
the same cases) in these languages.
Hakan
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