Cases in Indo-European

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, H. Mark Hubey wrote:

> Large scale changes cannot occur in large systems.

I see.  So that's why the earth's atmosphere never throws up hurricanes
or tornadoes.  And that's why El Nin~o has no discernible effect upon
the world's climate.

That's why stars -- large systems, wouldn't you say? -- never turn into
novas or supernovas.

And that's why Middle Chinese -- a large system by linguistic standards
-- hardly changed at all, and why all Chinese-speakers today can
understand one another without difficulty.

And, of course, that's why practically nothing has happened to English
in the last 500 years, and why we find it so easy to read `Piers
Ploughman'.

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Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk