Re: A few natlang questions...

On Wed, 7 Jun 2000 01:30:49 CDT, Danny Wier <dawier@...> wrote:

>WHo can help me here?
>
>1) After reading a few posts about IE-lang cases, I renembered that Latin,
>Russian (along with I think all other Slavic languages except Bulgarian)
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.

>and
>Greek have the vocative case,
>but only for masculine singular.
More exactly, old IE langs have no special vocative form for neutra and
plurals. PIE non-neuter o-stems (mostly m., but also f.) have a distinct
vocative equal to the stem with /o/ altered to /e/; this form is
preserved also in Latin (_amice_, etc.). PIE â-stems (mostly f., but
also m.) had vocative ending in shortened -a. This form merged
phonetically with nom. in Latin, but is mostly kept distinct from nom. in
Greek, Slavic, Lithuanian, etc. Besides, non-neuter consonantal stems
with lengthened vowel in Nom. usually have no such lengthening in voc. -
a feature partly preserved in Greek, Sanskrit, etc.

>I forgot if
>this is true for Sanskrit, Avestan or any old Germanic language.
For Sanskrit, yes (with the above corrections). For Germanic, no. For
Avestan, I don't remember.

>2) How did Bulgarian lose all the cases
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).

>but inherit a suffixed definite
>article?
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_.

>(I just remember the feminine article _-ta_; I guess neuter would
>be _-to_; and I have no idea what the masculine is...)
The form of the article in Bulgarian depends on the gender only partly
(for example, nouns ending in -o will take on _-to_ even if they aren't
neuter).

Masculine nouns ending in a 'historically hard' consonant used to have
final -U in Proto-Slavic. A sequence like _gradU-tU_ ('city-that')
regularly yielded [grad@t] 'the city' in Bulgarian (opposed to [grad]
'a city'). In the colloquial language, [grad@t] was shortened into
[grad@]. As the latter resembled some older forms of genitive and
accusative, the rule was artificially introduced in the written language
that [grad@t] (nowadays spelled _gradUt_) should be used in nom., and
[grad@] (since 1945 spelled _grada_) for the other cases. Colloquial
language uses [grad@] in all functions.

<...>
(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)


Basilius