Re: [Courrier ind?sirable] Re:[tied] Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 53518
Date: 2008-02-17

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:12:40 -0000, "tgpedersen"
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>> >> >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?
>>
>> And that disproves your theory.
>
>There must something here I don't understand. The fact that the case
>distinction continued in French and Occitan shows that the s-endings
>were not shibbolethized in Italian or what are you saying?

Your statement was:

"Some dimwits use nom. (-i, -ae > -e [actually -i, -e
--mcv]) in the pl. for all cases, other dimwits use acc.
(-os, -as)"

I assumed that by "some dimwits" you meant the Easterners,
and by "other dimwits" the Westerners. The Old French facts
show that there were no "other dimwits" (acc.pl. -os, as was
used in Western Romance side by side with nom.pl. -i, -e),
so there remain no grounds for "shibbolethization" amongst
the "some dimwits". In fact, the "some dimwits" are just the
Latin speakers who happened to have dropped final -s (c.q.
turned it into -i in monosyllables).

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