Re: [Courrier indésirable] Re:[tied] Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:24:38 -0000, "tgpedersen"
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>>
>> Sure they do. I've seen explanations of Italian -ai <
>> -as
>> that roughly give
>> -as
>> -ah
>> -ay
>> Think of French chanterais
>>
>
>This is my version:
>Case breaks down in Romance. Some dimwits use nom. (-i, -ae > -e) in
>the pl. for all cases, other dimwits use acc. (-os, -as). The choice
>between those form becomes shibbolethized, so that using 2.sg. -Vs etc
>is bad for you. It becomes replaced with -i.

Except that this is falsified by the facts. The
nominative-accusative distinction (Nom -os, Acc. -o; pl. Nom
-i, Acc -os) survived in areas where final -s was not
regularly lost, and is abundantly attested in Old French and
Old Occitan. The key factor was phonological loss, not "the
breakdown of case". Eastern Romance also initially
preserved case where that was phonologically possible (e.g.
the feminine oblique (gen./dat.) in Romanian).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...