[tied] Re: Marked nominative

I am not quite sure about this. In North germanic (old norse, and
still in modern Icelandic) the nominative tend to be marked, and not
the accusative.

In Icelandic the nominative ending (of sg.m) has even become stronger
that in old norse, and si a very audible feature of the Icelandic
language.

Horse: hestur (nom.sg), hest (acc.sg)

In modern Greek the nominative also tend to be marked, while the
accusative unmarked.


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>
> Brian on Italian, Portuguese, etc:
> >Since they've lost all case marking, it doesn't seem to me
> >that it really makes any sense to describe any particular
> >case as unmarked.
>
> By that reasoning, since English has lost all original markings
> of the present indicative, the IE present cannot be said to
> be marked or unmarked.
>
> That arguement makes no sense, of course. The loss of
> all case markings has no bearing on which case was marked
> or unmarked. However there is motivation to lose the
> nominative endings first because it is normally the default
> and unmarked case.
>
>
> - gLeN
>
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