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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <miguelc@...>
wrote:

>
> 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.

OK. And?

> The key factor was phonological loss, not "the breakdown of case".

And this is where I expected a fact, not an authoritative statement.
Cf. Gmc. masc. a-stems,
ON pl.nom hestar, acc.pl. hesta,
Sw. all cases pl. hلstar,
Da. all cases pl. heste.
Tell me what phonological loss caused that, if it's not the breakdown
of case, Swedes picking nom. Danes picking acc.?

> Eastern Romance also initially preserved case where that was
> phonologically possible (e.g. the feminine oblique (gen./dat.) in
> Romanian).

Why is that relevant?

And BTW: phonological loss is not an external event. It is not the
weather. You don't let your auslaut phonemes go, if they matter to the
grammar of the language, the way you understand it. The ambiguity of
final -n in Dutch makes it much easier to learn for a foreigner than
German, the native speakers of which are (used to be) much less
relaxed about the outer form of their language.


Torsten