accusative and ergative languages
JoatSimeon at aol.com
JoatSimeon at aol.com
Fri Jul 16 16:43:23 UTC 1999
proto-language at email.msn.com writes:
> I also am certain that if we had reason to know that Albanian and English
>were descendants of a common language, we would eventually discover a kind
>of IE that would be inaccurate in some ways but essentially write.
-- no we wouldn't. Sigh.
As time goes on, any given language gives us less and less information about
previous forms. Information is _lost_.
Eg., no amount of analysis of Germanic will give you a PIE word for "bear"
because that word dropped out of that family. All you'll get is variations
on "the brown one".
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