Re: Roumán Part II - Nouns, Adjectives,and Pronouns

En réponse à Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:

>
> Absolutive comes from the nominative, while the ergative is derived from
> the ablative.  Since ablative was used for agent of passive and
> instrumental, I figured it would be likely to become an ergative.
>
A nice idea, but I'm wondering about the meaning of verbs. This evolution would
mean that all transitive verbs would have a swapping of meaning, from active to
"passive", unless the endings you kept where from the passive voice already.

> > So, when talking to an equal or an inferior, you use a nom-acc system
> for 1st
> > and 2nd persons? And when your talking to a superior, you use an
> ergative
> > system, but with 3rd person agreement on the verb, for both 1st and
> 2nd persons?
> > Very neat! :)
>
> In essence.  Hadn't thought of it that way.  The 3rd person agreement
> was inspired by Spanish _usted(es)_, and the forms by Japanese, which
> uses "that direction" for one polite form of "you", and, I think, "this
> direction" for a polite form of "I".
>
Indeed. That's a nice idea, very plausible and still original :) .

> > > Definite Articles
> > Do they come from ipse or from iste?
>
> Ipse.  If they'd come from _iste_, they'd have {c}, since /st/ -> /ts/
> early on, hence, çáu < stare.  Much more interesting way of dealing with
> those clusters than simply prefixing e-, I think.  Unique, too, AFAIK.
I think so. In French, we simply added the adverb "ecce" in front of iste and
ille, and then lost the "ec-", which explains forms like (in Old French) cist,
cil, cestui, celui, etc...

Christophe.