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Inflecting Jesus Christ (was: Never violate a universal ...)

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Friday, September 5, 2003, 16:16
Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> Swedish disbeys #2. (You can, with good justification, argue that the -s > genitive is nowadays an enclitic, but I'll refuse to take seriously any > analysis that says that _Jesu_ is formed from _Jesus_ by adding a clitic!)
/me waves hand and says "Suppletion". :-) Do you have constructions in Swedish like "the mayor of Boston's hat" (standard) or "That umbrella's the young lady I go with's" (colloquial)? I've always thought it was a cool feature of German that "Jesus Christus" (or either part thereof) keeps its Latin inflections: Nom: Jesus Christus ist der EINZIGE Weg zu Gott. Gen: Wir sind alle Glieder des Leibes Jesus Christi. Dat: Na, heute Morgen habe ich einen Telefonanruf von Jesu Christo bekommen. Acc: Wir wollen nun untersuchen, was die Bibel tatsächlich über Jesum Christum berichtet. All examples are from actual German web pages, and I tried to avoid pre-20th-century texts. In passing, I also spotted these forms in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Dutch, but I don't believe there was any live usage. -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.reutershealth.com ccil.org/~cowan Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos --Lithuanian proverb Deus dedit dentes; deus dabit panem --Latin version thereof Deity donated dentition; deity'll donate doughnuts --English version by Muke Tever God gave gums; God'll give granary --Version by Mat McVeagh

Replies

Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>
Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Ian Spackman <ianspackman@...>