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Hi! Peter Collier writes: > --- Henrik Theiling <theiling@hidden.email> wrote: > >> Do you mean Þrjótur or Germany? :-) > > Why, Þrjótur of course, where the citizens shiver in > their togas! Give me the Rhein, Mosel and Alps any > day :) Well, we do have Eiswein in Germany. Delicious! And the people in Þrjótur gave up about growing their own wine and happily import it from your country! :-) >... > 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!? Yeah, its really interesting, isn't it? :-) > 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? >... Hmm, I don't think that is very likely. But not impossible. I had to drop the acc vs. abl distinction in Þrjótrunn. I did not like it, but taking over the function of another case would probably require the forms to be similar, otherwise, I'd think it's not very plausible. Therefore, in contrast to other Romlangs that had the problem of case collapse and solved it by now having acc. vs. dat., I decided that abl. and acc. collapse. (The typical locative vs. illative distincution of German's dat vs. acc case would probably not have survived anyway, regardless of whether the cases had survived, given that only the Latin prepositions 'in' and 'sub' distinguish it by case (abl. vs acc.).). > 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? >... If the forms where similar -- sure. (The case is with -i-, btw: 'genitive') > 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? Hmm, not sure about that explanation. But you might want to wait for others to comment, I often struggle with such things, too... **Henrik