Case System Collapse (was: Transhumance)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
> > 05-01-04 12:07, tgpedersen wrote:

> Since it would be a language of the great illiterate unwashed, by
> definition there wouldn't be. And before I actually heard someone

in

> Iowa say "I have took" for "I have taken", I would have sworn it
> didn't exist.

How about "I have sat"? While the historical tendency is for the
vowel of the past participle to move into the simple past, the
reverse process happens intermittently to this day.

> And why is there no "case system collapse" in former Celtic

territory

> in Germany, if the initial conditions for the Germanic dialects are
> the same?

German feminine nouns don't show case differences in the singular.

Why is there a "case system collapse" in the Romance-speaking former
Celtic territories? The case system has also collapsed in Welsh.
It's preserved in Irish.

Richard.