arbitrary case-marking?

[John Myhill]

I'm enormously suspicious of claims like this. Linguists typically make
such claims when they can't figure out the motivation themselves. Whenever
I've investigated a claim like this, it's turned out there is a difference
which the
linguist didn't notice for some reason.
John Myhill


>Dear Funknetters
>     In his (1994) grammar of Old Tamil Thomas Lehmann shows that in this
>language case endings can either just be dropped or exchanged without any
>semantic motivation. (The latter point is also made in Tolkaappiyam, the
>grammar written in and about Old Tamil.) This sounds surprising, at least
>to me. However, it recalls what S. Beyer (1991) has called the 'Telegram
>Principle': In written (and especially poetic?) language rules of grammar
>may be broken to achieve conciseness. How widespread is this phenomenon,
>and does it occur in spoken language too? (Presumably it occurred also in
>spoken Old Tamil.) I must confess that to me this is a rather new phenomenon.
>Esa Itkonen