Re: EAK nouns

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, modulo regular sound
changes that have applied. Now the question is which would
similarly be perceived as the unmarked form of Greek
nominals. 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. 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. Consider
   further that Παιάνου's native Italiote language may
   have lost final /s/ and /n/ similar to OTL Italian. 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) then the Koiné dative singular will
   at least in sound coincide or be closely similar to the
   base form in Italiote for most nominals.

- 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-. 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. 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', since
   they are distinct from the enclitic genitive marker -s
   ultimately derived from one class of Old Swedish genitive
   singular masculines and neuters. 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. I fear μητ'ηρ--
   μήτρα and other pairs would be identical in
   composition form, however!


 > 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!

 >
 >: 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
 >: άνθρωπος, ανθρώπου person, human being [e] ανθρώπω
 >: φλέψ, φλεβός       vein [f]                φλεβί
 >: γίγας, γίγαντος    giant [m]               γίγαντι
 >: ελπίς, ελπίδος     hope [f]                ελπίδι
 >: χάρις, χάριτος     grace, favor [f]        χάριτι
 >: όρνις, όρνιθος     bird [e]                όρνιθι
 >: πόλις, πόλεως      city [f]                πόλει
 >: ιχθύς, ιχθύος      fish [m]                ιχθύϊ
 >: βασιλεύς, βασιλέως king [m]                βασιλεί
 >: πατήρ, πατρός      father [m]              πατρί
 >: σώμα, σώματος      body [n]                σώματι
 >: γένος, γένους      race, type, kind [n]    γένει
 >: ήπαρ, ήπατος       liver [n]               ήπατι
 >: κρέας, κρέως       meat [n]                κρέαι
 >: γόνυ, γόνατος      knee [n]                γόνατι
 >: ούς, ωτός          ear [n]                 ωτί
 >
 > Note: i. [e] = epicene (masc. or feminine)

BTW, I suppose "epicene" is a Greek term,
but I can't find it, and its literal meaning, in
my small dictionary.

/BP

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