[YG Conlang Archives] > [romconlang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
--- Henrik Theiling <theiling@hidden.email> wrote: > Do you mean �rj�tur or Germany? :-) Why, �rj�tur of course, where the citizens shiver in their togas! Give me the Rhein, Mosel and Alps any day :) > - a shift s > z > r (I like that). Would be > interfering with your > GMP, I suppose, so this probably does not help > much... It is a good shift, but sadly my GMP is set in stone (at least, the main German features) so it has to remain /s/ > /z/ > / /. A shift to /r/ is just a little too nordic. > - finding analogies in the declensions to make > the combination > article + noun unique again -- if there is any > plausible way to > explain this (in German, it is interesting that > the plural of > feminine nouns is always different from the > singular, while > in maskuline and neuter, it is not -- what a > coincidence: > in the feminine, the articles in sg and pl > coincide in > nom, acc, and gen.), The best solution I expect, but I'm struggling to find analogies at the moment. I don't think I have two (Latin) 3rd declension nouns the same, which considering its the largest class is a little worrying! > - ignoring the problem and just declare it a > feature > (Icelandic's -a,-u declension of feminines has > this > in gen,acc,dat, though the article *is* > distinguished, > so only indefinite noun phrases are > underspecified), Tempting, but probably unlikely - I'm sure real natural speakers would innovate to preserve the case, or else it would disappear. > - dropping dative case altogether as quite some > Germanic > languages did. I'm beginning to think this may have to be the way forward, although having already lost the Accusative, I was hoping to be able to keep the Dative at least. It is strange that if you apply the sound changes from a language with 4 cases to a language with 6 cases, you somehow only end up with 2 in the end!? Do you think it would be plausible that the genetive case (which is very distinct) might be extended to function as an overall Indirect case, covering the Latin Gen, Dat and Abl? Perhaps with the actual 'case' then being indicated by context and by prepositions and/or pronouns? That would mean though that at some point "people" were mixing up their gentives and datives - is that likely when the genetive has such a clear purpose? Perhaps if there was first a move away from genetive case towards posessive pronouns, which would leave the actual Genetive case as an oddity that had "something to do with indirectness" but not possession, which was indicated in another way? That way, when the dative becomes a bit hard to use clearly, "they" might be tempted to slip into the Genetive/Indirect instead? Pete.