biloxi update

"Alfred W. Tüting" ti at fa-kuan.muc.de
Thu Oct 14 07:13:58 UTC 2004


> (Dave) The only other similarity and possible influence I can think of off-hand
is that both Bulgarian and Rumanian have post-posed definite articles,
e.g. Bulg. cveteto (-to) and Rum. calul (-ul), although this trait isn't
shared by Greek; I don't know about other Balkan languages.  This is of
course the opposite of other Mod Latin languages which have the article
before the noun. <<


My guess is that the Balkan substrate (Dacian?) might have had this
feature (of post-posed definite articles) and some languages (like
Latin) were 'open' to it (homo ille vs. ille homo -> omul - l'uomo,
l'homme) but others were not. Yet, this doesn't work well for Slavic
tongues (cf. Bulgarian!).


BTW, the different uses of ablaut/non-ablaut verb forms in e.g. Dakota
still seems really puzzling to me.


Alfred



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