Re: [tied] number of cases in PIE

Hi, Sergei:

Thanks for the input about Mr. Palmaitis.  As I kind of obliquely indicated in my original message, I didn't really buy his claim.  I was just using it as a counter-argument to other information that I had read.  Sorry if I stirred up a hornet's nest. 

My original question was about the number of grammatical cases in (Late) PIE.  Is the general consensus on the number of cases indeed eight?  Can it be determined when these cases developed and why so many?

Andy Howey

 Sergejus Tarasovas <S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:

Mr. Palmaitis is an aggressive Balto-centrist (though he graduated in semitology and only later passed qualification exams in Baltistics), and a great deal of the stuff on his site is idiosyncratic. I personally don't like his backslapping ("such and such auctores think that ... . So much the worse for them -- I just know better.") or buffoon ("I've tried to reconstruct Old Prussian for so long... now it only remains for me to hang myself since it turned out that...") way of self-expression. AFAIK, his only real achievement in Old Prussian studies is the "revival" of Old Prussian (or, rather, creation of conlangish "New Prussian"), having little to do with real Old Prussian reconstruction. I've never come across references to his works in serious publications on Old Prussian.

 

Sergei