Re: TERMINOLOGY: Re: another new language to check out

Quoting Alex Fink <a4pq1injbok_0@...>:

> On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 23:01:06 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> >When you say nominative, do you mean accusative? The nominative, not
> mentioned
> >in my previous post, is unmarked. The full declension for _steza_ "girl":
> >
> >NOM stelza  stelzan
> >ACC stelzas stelzans
> >DAT stelzar stelzaner
> >GEN stelzai stelzain
> >
> >Clearly, the genitive form is the odd one out. This might be related to the
> fact
> >that while the other cases goes back as far as I've done any work on the
> family,
> >the genitive is relatively recent; it arose about a millennium ago.
> >
> >                                                        Andreas
>
> So the genitive is newer?  Wouldn't one expect its marker, then, to be
> affixed onto some already-extant form, so it appears on the outside?  Or was
> <stelzai> some other form with a regular plural that got reanalysed as a
> case form?
_Stelzai_ started out as an adjective, and thus originally had no plural form.
When it began to be felt to be a nominal form, it got an pl simply by tacking on
 the regular pl ending to it. I don't know if this is very realistic, but it's
been in the lang from the beginning, and I feel no wish to change it.

                                                            Andreas