Re: Analogy: cases & prepositions; verbal inflection & adverbs

Ed Heil wrote:

> (And since grammaticalizing cases made
> them necessary, you have to have a case AND preposition -- so that the
> preposition *refines* the meaning of the case, rather than
> substituting for it).
In archaic Greek, this was still the case.  The case system bore the
functional load while particles like _apo_, _para_ etc. refined the
meaning of the sentence, and were still felt to have adverbial force.

(I suspect that Homer's Greek was on the way to making prepositions
out of those adverbs, though, because of tmesis and other things.  I'm
sure Ray can more fully enlighten us, however!)

> I just thought it was an interesting analogy. :)
Yep. It's interesting how these things work.  It's one of the motivating factors
for the cyclicality of language change:  isolating, agglutinating, fusional, and
over again.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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