passive / locative

[Jan Anward]

A propos coincidences:

The Swedish verbal suffix -s, which marks passive and a few other valency
decreases, is homonymous with the genitive suffix on nouns.
David, you only need to link genitive to location, which I am certain
several people have done.
But, etymologically the two -s are not the same. The genitive -s is an old
nominal suffix, while the verbal -s derives from a reflexive pronoun (sik,
modern sig).

Jan Anward

________________________________________________________________________
Jan Anward
Department of Linguistics                       e-mail: jan at ling.su.se
Stockholm University                            tel:    +46 8 16 23 32
S-106 91 Stockholm                              fax     +46 8 15 53 89
Sweden

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