Re: A few natlang questions...

>From: Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>
>Actually, Russian has almost lost the vocative (there are only a few
>frozen remnants) while preserving the other 6 cases. Bulgarian has lost
>most case distinctions but preserved a separate vocative form.
Whoops, I forgot about that.  I just remembered the vocatives for "God" and
"father" (which are _Bog_ > _Boz^e_ and _otec'_ > _otc^e_).  And apparently
certain plural forms in -a (rather than -y/-i) for non-neuters is supposedly
a remnant of an old dual number.  The dual is not extant in any Slavonic
languages that I know of.

And thank God we got a resident Russian speaker here!  (I've been trying to
teach myself off and on.)

>For Sanskrit, yes (with the above corrections). For Germanic, no. For
>Avestan, I don't remember.
I do remember that Avestan has the vocative; I think it also has the same
eight-case system as Sanskrit.  (The phonology of Avestan is rather
interesting if any of you haven't researched it.  It's the only IE language
other than Welsh that has a voiceless lateral fricative, afaik.

>Actually, Bulgarian substantives may have a distinct form for vocative
>(in Sg. only) and a 'counting form' (used with some numerals) which
>partly stems from ancient nom. du., and partly from gen. sg. (IIRC).
>Besides, written language has the opposition 'nominative vs.
>non-nominative' for the masculine form of article in sg. (see below).
Yeah, the old dual for small numbers.  That's in Russian (for 2-4) too of
course, in the form of the genitive singular.

>Bulgarian (and Macedonian) suffixed articles are an innovation.
>Bulgarian article originates from the Proto-Slav demonstrative
>_tU_, _ta_, _to_ used enclitically ('U' is the 'reduced' vowel, _yer_).
>Macedonian developed *three* definite articles (differing in deixis
>degrees) from three demonstratives: _ovU_, _ova_, _ovo_; _tU_, _ta_,
>_to_; _onU_, _ona_, _ono_.
><...>
>(Can't help much with the Caucasian scripts; as for historical phonetics,
>try this site: http://starling.rinet.ru/texts/texts.htm - the 'Caucasian'
>section; you'll probably have to download their fonts first:
>http://starling.rinet.ru/Techno.htm)
Oh I've read Starostin's North Caucasian work!  I don't remember reading
anything about Caucasian script history (neither Georgian nor Armenian are
North Caucasian languages), but some cool stuff on phonology.  Anybody
remember the consonant phonology of Ubykh?

DaW.
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