Re: [tied] Re: Everything except agreement

On Thu, 15 May 2003 07:26:49 +0000, Glen Gordon
<glengordon01@...> wrote:

>Its lack of use in weak cases is not problematic. Non-focus nouns of a
>phrase (those that are neither subject, object, agent, nor patient) are
>unmarked for definiteness because they are not center stage. These
>non-focus nouns are marked in _weak_ cases where we coincidentally
>don't find *-s here. A realworld example: Basque /etxeko andrea/ "the
>lady of THE house", not **/etxeko-a andrea/.

But <etxekoa> is also possible. A Basque noun prase, whether ending
in a noun (andre-a "the lady"), an adjective (andre ederr-a "the
beautiful lady"), a genitive (andre-a-ren-a "that of the lady"), or
-ko (etxeko-a "that of the house"), can always be extended by the
definite article.

>Since the accusative, the only other strong case besides the nom.,
>was ALREADY marked for definiteness (*-m is definite and *-od is
>indefinite), *so helped out in the animate nominative. The inanimate
>was not marked in the acc. because it could not be the subject of a
>sentence, as attested in Anatolian. Therefore there was no point in
>marking the nominative. Thus *-t& had only marginal use in
>pronominals (> *-d) to provide gender contrast (*kWis/*kWid).

If you accept *-t > *-d without comment, then what's the problem with
*-s > *-z?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...