From: Urban Lindqvist
Message: 2047
Date: 2000-04-05
> From: Hakan Lindgren <h16255@...>If it is true for IE, it may simply be the case that IE has changed more than Finnish. One trace in IE of such a state of affairs would be accusative sing. *-m vs. pl. *-ns < *-m-s. Consider also the instr. pl. *-bhis, where the -s might originally have been a plural marker; it's missing in Greek -phi -- which was indifferent to number. Could there also have been some relationship between thematic dat. sg. *-o:i and instr. pl. *-o:is (< *-o-ei / *-o-ei-s?)?
>
> 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.