Re: [tied] Oblique

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 10839
Date: 2001-11-01

The usual dictionary definition of "oblique case" (as opposed to "direct") is as given by Miguel, the rationale for it being that the use of the oblique cases is determined by government relations. However, in IE studies it is convenient to have a term which distinguishes the nominative and the accusative (which almost always share the same or nearly the same "strong" stem allomorph, and are not distinguished for neuters) from the cases whose primary function is adjectival (gen.) or adverbial (dat., loc., instr., ...), and which often show a different ("weak") form of the stem. When one speaks of the "oblique stem", that means (rather loosely) the allomorph used with gen./dat./loc. ... endings, e.g. *diw-/*dju- as opposed to *dje:u-/*djew-. It's a purely pragmatic distiction.
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: markodegard@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 5:49 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Battle of the cow

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal:
> 2) Webster's defines "oblique (case)" as "a grammatical case other
> than the nominative and vocative".

Umm. Linguist writers tend to be oblique about oblique cases, to the
point you sometimes think they are talking about a specific
grammatical case. In my experience, they seem to be speaking of the
accusative, and seemingly, never of the dative, but my own knowledge
collapses at this point, so I'm only giving an impression.