Re: inalienable possession

At 20:08 18/11/98 -0000, you wrote:
>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 =3D *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 ?

        What I read is that PIE case endings came from postpositions. At
least it's the most accepted hypothesis.

>Mathias
>
>
>-----
>See the original message at=
 http://www.egroups.com/list/conlang/?start=3D18553
>
>
                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"R=E9sister ou servir"

homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html