Hello, all:
I was wondering how many cases there really were in PIE, or more
specifically, Late PIE. I specify Late PIE because according to most
information I've read, PIE went through an earlier "ergative" stage
first. In any case, most sources seem to agree that there were eight
cases:
nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, ablative,
locative, and vocative.
However, Dr Letas Palmaitis argues any cases other than nominative,
genitive, dative, and accusative are innovations for that particular
language (group). He claims that Prussian, and by extension
Sudovian/Yatvingian, maintain the archaic PIE four-case structure. He
claims that where one case might have a particular function in one
language group, that function will be taken over by (a) different
case(s) in other language groups. He doesn't seem to take into
consideration that the languages most closely related to Prussian,
Latvian and Lithuanian, and then the Slavic languages have, or had, at
least seven grammatical cases. If you're interested, you can read his
argument at
http://donelaitis.vdu.lt/prussian/reconstructions.htm --
it's the section labelled "THE 11th PRINCIPLE OF THE RECONSTRUCTION".
I have a book, in German, on Prussian grammar (Altpreussische
Grammatik by Jan Endzelin) that indicates remnants of the instrumental
and locative cases. So, it seems to me that Prussian might be the
innovator in dropping the additional cases. MIght that be because of
early contact with Germanic?
I would appreciate any clarification on this.
Thank you very much:
Andy Howey