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CHAT: Prepositions governing nominative,(X)... case [was Re: CHAT:

From:Talpas Tim <tim@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 12, 2001, 12:45
#
# How much sense does it make to have the nominative and accusative
# marked, but the genetive unmarked?
# i.e., Eviendadhail:
# idan - man NOM
# edan - man ACC
# dan - man gen
#

Seems entirely plausible.

You could argue that some Slovak nouns (and probably other slavic languages)
have an unmarked genitive in the plural.

Feminine nouns ending in -a and neuter nouns ending in -o have a "zero"
ending in the genitive plural.

mesto "town" NOMsg       záhrada "garden" NOMsg
mestá "towns" NOMpl      záhrady "gardens" NOMpl
miest "towns" GENpl      záhrad  "gardens" GENpl

the zero ending usually triggers compensatory lenghtening as in "miest", but
is prevented from doing so by the long á in "záhrad".

-tim
http://www.zece.com/conlang/