--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "pielewe" <wrvermeer@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > And is Novgorod m.nom. -e = vocative?
>
> There is no consensus, but I think nobody actually defends that view
> any more because the ending -e is found with inanimate nouns,
> adjectives, participles, and pronouns (*keto* 'who'). Most people
> regard the problem as just one of those things.
>
> I won't bother you with my pet theory, which you can find in
> Die Welt der Slaven 36/1-2 (1991) and Russian Linguistics
> 18/2, 1994.
In the latter article you write "...because to speakers of Finnic,
absence of a distinction between Nsg and Asg was rather extraordinary".
The Finnic accusative suffix was *-m. The Finnic genitive suffix
was *-n. In Finnic final *-m -> *-n. In Finnish, which recognizes
an accusative case, it is formed from various materials from other
cases. (All this is from Abondolo "The Uralic Languages"). Estonian
does not have an accusative. Mordva does not have an accusative.
Estonian uses the endingless nominative for "whole" objects in
affirmative sentences with a perfective semantics and in affirmative
imperative sentences, and genitive or partitive (<- ablative, with
a *-ta suffix) otherwise. Finnish does something similar. In
general, it is my impression (having had a year's worth course in
both) that the Russian (I can't vouch for the other Slavic languages)
pattern of use of nominative and genitive (<- ablative, with a *-ta
suffix) for the object, and the Estonian (I can't vouch for the other
Finnic languages) pattern of use of nominative, genitive and
partitive for the object are rather similar.
Which goes to imply that perhaps to speakers of Finnic, absence
of a distinction between Nsg and Asg was rather ordinary.
Praeterea censeo, BTW, that the vocative is not a case. It is a
lack of same; the noun when it doesn't have to dress up for its
role in sentence. Therefore, speakers of accusative languages
(which normally have an unmarked nominative) will pounce on that
as nominative, if they learn another accusative language.
Torsten