Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 12:56:30 +0100, Chris Bates
<chris.maths_student@...> wrote:

>But I'm still not sure that
>you can say that the tense/aspect system of the Romance languages has
>increased in the number of distinctions it makes since latin, since the
>opposite seems the case to me.
Consider e.g. the distinction between present perfect and preterite e.g. in
written French or in Spanish (at least in some dialects). This isn't found
in Latin. Also, many Romances have grammaticalized two different ways of
expressing the future (especially in their written forms).

===================================================

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 12:51:39 +0200, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
wrote:

>On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 06:19:06 -0400, Afian <yann_kiraly@...> wrote:
>> English does have a third case, the genitive. It is actualy the
>> only 'real' case in the sense that it is inflected. Example: "This is
>> Tim's ball." That "'s" on Tim is the genitive ending. It is also present
>> in German, where it is formed like this: "Das ist Tims Ball."
>
>Bad example, since in this case they look the same. However, if you
>use a noun phrase, you'll see a difference:
>
>This is the King of Spain's castle.
>Das ist das Schloss des Königs von Spanien.
>
>In English, the 's goes on the entire phrase "King of Spain"; in
>German, only the "König" receives the -s. As I understand it, this is
>what shows that German inflects the noun for case, while English uses
>a clitic to show a role, but it's not a grammatical case.
A clitic of what word?

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)

g_0ry@_^s:
j. 'mach' wust

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