Re: inalienable possession

Didier wrote :
> I thought that "case endings" were very ancient features in
> (real) languages, and that the evolution I adopted would look
> quite natural. Perhaps that's not the case?
>
I dunno. I just know for sure that ancient Japanese had none of its 'cases'
(enclitics) which derive from interjections still used as such in end of
sentence (yo, wa, no, ga, wo, etc). Ainu did not systematically enclitics so
that S and O have no enclitics (the bear eats the rabbit = *bear rabbit eat*).
Chinese derived PREpositions from *verbs* like *to give* as Nik recalls and
POSTpositions from *nouns* like *upper part* (shang). Khmer like Indonesian
don't make any difference between prepositions, adverbs and verbs. But I've
never read of pre-casual Sumerian or IE. How is that ?
Mathias


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