Re: Cases, again

Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:
> > > It seems to me that it has occured --partially, it's true-- in English
> and
> > > the Romance langs.  I think in Dutch too; how about the Scand.
> languages?
> > > What about Hindi and other Indic langs. -- any cases left there? Are
> > > pronouns treated differently than nouns?
> >
> > I'm not sure what you're saying? Certainly the neither the Scandinavian
> > language nor English use nominatives after prepositions despite having an
> > object case - nouns don't have an object case, and pronouns use the object
> > forms after prepositions ....
>
> Well, if I read _you_ aright, you're saying that Scand. langs., like Engl.,
> have only one form of the noun, which is not marked for case. So the form
> after e.g. the prep. "to" is the same as the form used for "subject/object
> of the verb".  Right?
Yes. I was asking for languages that have a separate object case, but fail to
use it after prepositions. Clearly the neither (the standard forms of) English
nor the Scandinavian forms qualify.

> My slight doubt about Dutch arises from the fact that
> some of the old 19th C stuff I've read _may_ have had accusative forms, at
> least of the article--- I'm unsure, because in reading I tend to gloss over
> details like that.
Would any of our native dutchophones care to still our doubts? I'd be grateful.

> > It occurs to me, however, that some Swedish dialects supposedly has
> retained a
> > separate dative case. I do not know if they use it and/or nom/acc after
> prepositions. BP?
>
> Of nouns?? or just of pronouns, which would be more expected.....
A separate dative case for nouns is the claim I've heard.

There's at least one frozen expression with a nominal dative marker still used
in Modern Swedish; _att gå man ur huse_, lit "to go man out of house"*, in
which _huse_ is the dat sg of _hus_ "house".

* The actual meaning is that one man from each household was sent out for
something. It's usually used vaguely to describe high turn-out for something.
_Byborna gick man hur huse för att protestera mot vägbygget_ "Most of the
villagers turned up to protest against the road construction" would be an
example of this extended usage.

                                                          Andreas