--- Ong Yong Peng <pali.smith@...> skrev:

> Dear Gunnar, George and Dipa,
>
> Dipa: modern English has evolved to the point the
> noun cases literally
> do not exist

Except genitive: John's house.

But one may also say "the house of John", using a
preposition for the same function.

And in the written language, the genitive "s" is
separated from the stem by a ', as if it weren't
really part of the word. In older English you may see
the expression "the king his servants", instead of
"the king's servants", but I don't know if the
genitive s is a historical remnant of this "his".

> Other languages like Latin has seven noun cases

Officially, Latin has only six; but I try to argue to
Latinists that it actually has all the eight cases of
Sanskrit and Pali, but ablative, locative and
instrumental always have the same forms. Calling it
all ablative makes it a case rather difficult to
understand.

(Finnish has, if I remember correctly, fifteen cases.
I suppose it is the same thing with Hungarian - but
these two aren't Indo-European.)

Gunnar







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