LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 12.JAN.2001 (08) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 12.JAN.2001 (08) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Morphology

Barbara wrote:
>Many languages that had  cases in their old forms have substututed them by
pronoun constructions. In French the only remains of a dativ are the
pronouns "lui" and "leur". In High German you can talk about cases, because
you still find endings for 4 cases. But in Low German as in English you have
the same 2 cases ...<

1. I think that in the first sentence she means "prepositional
constructions", and this applies only to some of the cases.
2. I think French is a bit more complicated than this. BTW, one of the
amusing things about it is that the current noun forms derive from the
accusative, not the nominative.
3. We still have a genitive in English as well as the forms listed. Beyond
that, however, is there not a confusion between "cases" and "forms"? The
first pers. sing. pronoun has the forms "I", "me", "mine" but the second
does duty for the object case, the indirect object case and the
prepositional case which certainly correspond to different grammatical
concepts.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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