Re: Noun Cases
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, February 29, 2004, 17:58 |
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On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 11:54:13AM -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> Indeed. At least in Okaikiar, which has both, a noun in the causastive
> case answers the question "why?"
Incidentally, I have an extra slot in Okaikiar morphology around the causative
case. I can make a distinction between "prompted by" (cause before the
action) and "in order to accomplish" (cause after the action). I have
not made use of this distinction, but I'm aware that some sort of
distinction within the causative exists or has existed in other
languages. In particular, I believe there used to be a technical
distinction between English "why" and "wherefore", but cannot find an
explication of this distinction online. The AHD and M-W have
"wherefore" defined as a synonym of "why". Can anyone on here shed some
light? Why was Shakespeare's "whys and wherefores" not a redundant
phrase?
-Mark
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