Re: YAEGT: 's (was Re: Standard Average European (was: case system))

2008/4/14, J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...>:


> >That is an interesting point, but doesn't explain why the
> >masculine and
>  >feminine are the same.
>
>
> But the genitive doesn't either -- unless the Old
> English genitive was very different from the modern
> German one. In modern German, feminine genitives don't
> feature the s-ending. The s-ending is only found on
> masculines and neutra.
That was because the masculine a-stem inflection type (which
are so called because they had a stem ending in -a in Common
Germanic), which in Old English had genitive singular in -es
and nom/acc plur in -as, spread to other nouns regardless of
original inflection class and gender. It didn't happen
overnight, and even today some 'weak plurals' remain in
_children, oxen_.

Whether the -s genitive spread to the plural or the plural
simply became indeclinable is a moot point: the spelling
distinction between -'s, -s and -s' is of course just that:
a spelling distinction, all written languages being to some
degree conlangs.

It has been argued that the spread of the -s plural was
partly due to influence of Old French, where plural -s
occurred in practically all nouns, but that wouldn't explain
why the genitive -s spread at the same time.

While I was writing this Tristan wrote:

> No, the Old English genitive was -es/-es/-e/-a (M/N/F/pl),
> same (wrt -s) as modern German (based on Wikipedia). But
> the Nominative/ Accusative plural ending was -as only in
> the masculine; in the neuter and feminine it was -u/- and
> -a/-e respectively. It is clear that in English all nouns
> basically became masculine. Someone with a better
> knowledge of the timing of everything and Middle English
> might also be able to provide some evidence that
> possessive -s had already generalised to all numbers and
> all genders before it had cliticised.

I don't remember any hard evidence or where to find it,
but the spread of the -s inflexion type was essentially a
Middle English thing, while the cliticization was an Early
New English thing. They may have to some extent
overlapped, however.

BTW OE had other, minor, inflexion classes for nouns of
all genders than the ones you cite, most notably the -n
stems which were not exactly a minor class.

/BP

--
/ BP

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