Re: EAK nouns

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> I don't know why I hadn't got Ray's post, but I found it in Henrik's
> mirror archive quite easily! Plu podence al empradaur Herrig!
>
> Ray wrote:
>> I previously suggested using the ancient Greek genitive, removing
>> the final -ς if there was one - but pointed out the problems. It
>> now seems to me that a more satisfactory solution, and more in
>> keeping with the spirit of "Latino sine flexione" would be to use
>> the _dative_ singular (dropping the 'iota subscript' of the 1st &
>> 2nd declensions).
>
> What made Peano choose the ablative singular for the LSF form of
> nominals (nouns and adjectives) surely was the fact that it coincides
> with the unmarked nominative singular form of Italian (and Spanish)
> in the vast majority of words descended or borrowed from Latin,
The official line is that Peano wished to adopt the basic stem of nouns
& verbs (in the case of adjectives, it's the basic stem of the neuter).
That this coincides with the ablative was fortuitous, but handy. Of
course with 1st, 2nd & 3rd declensions this will correspond by and large
with Italian. But 4th decl. are different, e.g. _manu_ (It., Sp. mano)
and Latin 5th decl. tended to migrate to the 1st in VL.

> modulo regular sound changes that have applied. Now the question is
> which would similarly be perceived as the unmarked form of Greek
> nominals.
Which would be perceived as the stem?

> There are as I see it two and a half possibilities:
>
> - the first and half one mostly make sense in terms of the Western
> Hellenism Alternate Timeline (WHAT), if we allow ourselves to assume
> that the languages spoken in southwestern Europe in the WHAT has
> derived their base form of nominals from the Koiné accusative, as the
>  Romance languages have derived theirs from the Latin accusative.
Tho in the case Latin, it wasn't the Classical acc. - it was the VL acc.
which happened to be the same as the Classical ablative in the 1st, 2nd
& 3rd decl, (the 4th & 5th did not survive in VL).

> This scenario receives some support from Modern Greek of Our Time
> Line (OTL), where most third declension nominals have acquired a new
> thematic nominative based on the Koiné accusative.
Yes, but the question is what would the Helleniclangs of Italy, Gaul and
the Iberian peninsular be like in WHAT. Only in Gaul did any noun
declension survive - nouns were never declined even in Old Spanish or
Italian. Would we find comparable differences in the WHAT Helleniclangs?

> Consider further that Παιάνου's native Italiote language may have
> lost final /s/ and /n/ similar to OTL Italian.
It probably would.

> The half possibility is then that if the WHAT languages are itacistic
> (i.e. η and diphthongs in -ι all become /i/ as in OTL Modern Greek)
That I feel is much less certain. There was also a strong Doric element
in the Greek of Magna Graecia and that may well have affected the
'Vulgar Greek' of Italy    :)

> then the Koiné dative singular will at least in sound coincide or be
> closely similar to the base form in Italiote for most nominals.
That would true only of the 1st decl. if there was also itacism. It
surely will not be true of the 3rd decl.; the Italiote Greek nom. is
assumed to -a, but the Koine dative ending is -i.

The 2nd decl. will be similar (or the same if ο and ω were pronounced
the same, as in MG) - but stress will often be different; for example,
if we assume the Italiote scenario outlined above in WHAT, the 'human
being' will be _άνθρωπο_ (with stress on the first syllable), but the
Koine dative would give us _ανθπώπω_ with stress on the middle syllable.

> - The second possibility, which is the most viable from the POV of
> the role of Greek in OTL Western languages: the form of any Greek
> nominal which a speaker of these languages who is unfamiliar with
> actual Greek will most often encounter is surely the compound-initial
> form in -o-.
...which, of course, the ancient Greeks were familiar with since .....

> It may moreover be considered basic even in Greek itself in that it
> is frequently encountered in that compounding- happy language, but
> also in that it is in a sense a form of the nominal which is unmarked
> for case, number and gender, and yet is linguistically real.
I've been coming to this conclusion also. It further has the advantage
that it is independent of any development that may or may not have
happened in the western Helleniclangs of WHAT.

> One early 20th century Swedish linguist suggested that the relict Old
>  Swedish genitive plural and weak genitive singular forms which
> appear as initial parts of compounds may synchronicly be regarded as
> a 'composition case',
Yep.
  [snip]

> This concept of 'composition case' may perhaps be applied to the
> Greek -o- form as well. It may have appeared basic even to a WHAT
> Paeanou, assuming that compounds be as frequent in WHAT Greek as in
> OTL Greek.
That it frequent in ancient Greek is justification enough, I think.
Paeanou would want to adopt the stem or base; the 'compositional' form
could be so considered.

> I fear μητ'ηρ-- μήτρα and other pairs would be identical in
> composition form, however!
They are identical in composition in OTL, cf. metropolis (metro-
"mother") "mother city" ~ metrorrhagia (metro- "womb, uterus") "bleeding
from the uterus". (Of course in English these two have also become
identical to μετρο- but that doesn't happen in Greek in OTL nor in AEK!)
>
>> Thus, for example (I hope the table doesn't get hopelessly
>> distorted):
>
> It did, but I cleaned it up rather easily:
>
> 1. Replace all runs of tabs and spaces and multiple spaces with with
> single tabs by two regular expressions: - s{\t | \t}{\t} - s{\t+}{\t}
>  2. Set the text editors' tab display to a huge number exceeding the
> widest lines in any column. 3. Use the text editors' "convert tabs to
> spaces" feature. 4. Use the text editors' block select mode to remove
> excess whitespace between columns, leaving only the necessary minimum
> for clear reading. Voilà!
Except Thunderbird doesn't seem to let me see tabs etc.

>>
>> : ANCIENT            MEANING                 EAK : (Nom. & gen.) :
>> χώρα, χώρας        land [f]                χώρα : τιμή, τιμής
>> honor [f]               τιμή : θάλασσα, θαλάσσης  sea [f]
>> θαλάσση : κριτής, κριτού     judge [m]               κριτή :
Oh dear - it's mess - sorry.
[snip]
>> Note: i. [e] = epicene (masc. or feminine)
>
> BTW, I suppose "epicene" is a Greek term,
Ultimately - it's derived from επίκοινος (επί + κοινός)

>  but I can't find it, and
> its literal meaning, in my small dictionary.
Chamber's English Dictionary defines the adjective thus:
"common to both sexes: having the characteristics of both sexes, or
neither: effeminate: of common gender (-gram._): sometimes restricted to
those words that have one grammatical gender though used for both sexes."

I was using the word with the penultimate meaning, not the ultimate one.

Yes, I think I will probably go with the "composition case" idea - which
isn't quite so simple as "knock of endings and add o" for all nouns, tho
it does work for both. Yes, EAK is not nearly so straightforward to
derive as LSF   ;)

Watch this space.


--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB}

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