Re: Old Albic minor update

Hallo!

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 20:46:01 -0500, Herman Miller wrote:

> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo!
> >
> > I have made a few minor changes (two new cases, modified pronouns) to the
> > grammar of Old Albic:
> >
> > http://wiki.frath.net/Old_Albic
> >
> > I am planning a major overhaul at a later date, so comment on it
> > (readablity,
> > what is better moved to a separate article, etc.) is appreciated.
> >
> > ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
>
> What you've got looks pretty good and well organized. Maybe a bit on the
> long side for a wiki article, but you could easily split it up into
> separate articles for each section if it starts getting too long.
I am indeed considering splitting it up.  There are a few other changes
in my "pipeline", such as more and better examples (some of the examples
in the current version contain vocabulary that is up to revision); when
I find the time to do them, I'll split the page.

> Interesting how the inanimate nouns have a smaller number of cases. Is
> there a natlang precedent for that? (I know that neuter nouns in some
> languages have ambiguous forms, but that's not quite the same thing.)
I don't surely know of any natlang precedent, but it occured to me that
some cases really don't make much sense with inanimate nouns.  What I
know and gets closest to this is the avoidance of neuter transitive
subjects in several of the older Indo-European languages.  The common
nominative-accusative form of IE neuters has been termes an "absolutive",
with the corresponding ergative simply missing.  I also dimly remember
reading somewhere that in some Caucasian languages, inanimate nouns
have no ergative.

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