Re: Borrowing Latin case forms (was Re: EAK nouns)

Sorry for tofu - bberry interface not amenable to intermixing.

I assume that "Jesum" is the acc of "Jesus"?
 (And is that the normal German spelling of the name?)

That reminds me of a question I've had for a while - whence "Jesu"
(e.g. "Joy of Man's Desiring")?  Wouldn't the voc of "Jesus" be
"Jese"?  Or is it 4th decl with long -us in the nom?  Or is "Jesu"
just the nom with the -s dropped as part of the sound changes made in
Latin en route from CL to Romance?

On 5/13/07, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Sun, 13 May 2007 01:29:10 -0700, Joesph Fatula wrote:
>
> > Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > > Hallo!
> > >
> > > On Sun, 13 May 2007 08:34:33 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
> > > [...]
> > >> But we don't, do we? We just use the foreign nominative. For example we
> > >> might say "There were a lot of fungi in the wood this morning", but
> few,
> > >> I think, would say "There were a lot _fungorum_ in the wood this
> > >> morning"      :)
> > >>
> > >
> > > This sort of thing was actually common in the speech of educated Germans
> > > some time ago.  Latin loans were declined Latin-wise.  It no longer is,
> > > though.
> > >
> > > ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
> > >
> > German I think would be more amenable to this sort of thing anyway,
> > being that German already draws the same case distinctions as Latin.  In
> > German, you're essentially just saying that "der fungus" has an unusual
> > genitive form "des fungi".  Whereas in English, you'd have to explain
> > the whole concept of case, as noun phrases don't change for case in
> English.
>
> Yes.  German has a case system that makes the same distinctions as Latin,
> except that there is no ablative (use the dative instead in most instances)
> and the vocative isn't distinct from the nominative.  Thus, borrowing case
> forms from Latin works quite well, and involves only new *forms* and no new
> *categories* of grammar.  English, au contraire, has no case system, hence
> borrowing Latin case forms into it involves borrowing a whole new
> grammatical
> category.
>
> On Sun, 13 May 2007 10:46:11 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
> On 13.5.2007 Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> >  > This sort of thing was actually common in the speech of
> >  > educated Germans some time ago. Latin loans were declined
> >  > Latin-wise. It no longer is, though.
> >
> > I have an only 30 year old German book which uses the
> > accusative "Jesum", but that's probably a special case.
>
> I haven't yet meant anyone who uses such forms in their habitual speech,
> but some scholarly books and papers I have read used them as late as about
> 1960.  However, it was much more common in the 18th and 19th centuries.
>
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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