Re: Just a Little Taste of Judean

On Sat, 10 Apr 1999 22:37:33 -0400 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> writes:
>Steg Belsky wrote:
>> So far, i don't think it'll have cases.
>> Nouns are descended from Latin's genitive case (like Spanish's are
>from
>> the accusative).
>That seems unlikely to me.  The genitive was lost very early on in
>Latin
>evolution.  Genitive is an oblique case.  Typically, when cases are
>lost, the core cases (that is, nominative and accusative or ergative
>and
>absolutive, as the case may be) provide the remaining form.  Most
>probable would be either accusative remaining, as in French, Spanish,
>Portuguese, etc., or nominative, as in Italian, Romanian, etc.  In
>fact,
>I don't know of any examples, from any families, where a non-core case
>was the last remaining.
Well, this is my Fat-Chance Rationalization:

Judean is a Latin-based language placed over a Semitic substrate.  In
Hebrew and Aramaic, there's a _construct state_, which is the opposite of
the genitive case.

Hebrew:  (garden-of) (animals)
Latin: (garden) (of-animals)

So, in Hebrew, the form of the word which is used in the second part of a
construct case is the *normal* form.  So, by another
substrate/second-language mix up, the genitive case becomes equated to
the second part of the construct case, and through that, to the "normal
word".

RL Reason: i wanted to be different :)


-Stephen (Steg)
 "God punishes - humans take revenge."

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