From: g
Message: 43033
Date: 2006-01-19
> According to a short sketch of Platt grammar I have (but not here),cf:
> nouns are inflected like this:
> m.sg.nom. 'der', oblique 'den'
> f.sg. all cases 'de'
> n.sg. all cases 'dat'
> pl. all cases 'de'
>
> which is pretty much the system, Dutch had until around 1930(?).
> Loss of 'den' (substituted with 'de') made the case system collapse,
> and merged m. and f.
>
> Same book says western dialects have -(e)n in all persons in the pl.
> of verbs (also like Dutch (and Western Middle English?)), those to
> east have -(e)t (cf the bumper sticker "wi snackt platt").
>
> And on the subject of collapse of inflectional systems: Apart from
> the Scandinavian languages the only other examples I know of
> languages which have lost all inflection for person and number in
> the verb are those dialects of Latvian that are spoken on former
> Livonian territory in the north of the country.
>
> Torsten