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Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

From:J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 18, 2004, 14:13
On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:18:35 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>: > >> A clitic of what word? > >? I do not understand this question.
Clitics are words that are phonetically melted with others, e.g. the present third person singular of to be's often cliticized. The 'Saxon genitive'-s is not a word phonetically melted with others; therefore, it's not a clitic, but rather an ending. I think you could consider it to be a possessive ending if you don't want to think of it as a genitive, but from a historical point of view there's no doubt it is (a relict of) a genitive.
>> In German, there's a similar inconsistence of the placing of the >> Genitive-s, compare the following phrases: >> >> _Onkel Dagoberts Millionen_ 'uncle Dagobert's millions' >> _die Millionen unseres Onkels Dagobert_ 'the millions of our uncle >> Dagobert' >> >> (examples by pr. Hentschel) > >How is the English placement inconsistent?
Sure it isn't. I should have said: Similar discrepancies like the one pointed out between English and German (in order to show that the English _'s_ isn't a genitive) are found within the German genitive. g_0ry@_^s: j. 'mach' wust

Replies

Joe <joe@...>
Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
John Cowan <jcowan@...>