Re: Prepositions and case

That should've been Pindecht of course! :-)

2008/3/30, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
> What can I say other than that I agree with your thinking:
> the grammatical distinction between prepositions governing
> the acc. and the dative would be carried over as a feature
> borrowed from the Germanic substrate. Granted it would no
> longer matter which prep governed which case in Latin, but
> rather whether they indicated motion or location, plus
> some cases of perhaps mistaken identification between
> Latin and Germanic prepositions. In Old High germanican
> you should also get a number of preps governing the
> genitive, of course.
>
> (Come to think of it: Pete do you have an Old/Middle High
> German grammar around? I think we should get one...)
>
> On 30.3.2008 Peter Collier wrote:
>  > The language is VL based. Ablatve forms do merge with the
>  > accusative, and so logic (and OTL fact) moves all the
>  > prepositions over to governing the accusative. BUT, and
>  > this is where the grain of doubt enters my mind:
>  >
>  > ~ The Romance languages lose case disitnction generally,
>  > and quite early on - my Romconlang does not.
>  >
>  > ~ In (very) Old French at least there is only a
>  > Nom/Oblique dsitinction (I'm not familiar enough with the
>  > history of the other natangs to cite here), so the
>  > prepositions could be said to govern the oblique case,
>  > rather than the acccusative. Either way, the preopositions
>  > do not govern *nominatives* - but IMC the accusative has
>  > merged with the nominative and there is only a Nom/Gen/Dat
>  > distinction.
>  >
>  > ~ The pre-Roman substrate in the region uses the Dative
>  > also for indirect objects, and in situations where
>  > (Classical) Latin uses/used the Ablative.
>  >
>  > So I have poor old Octavio who is confused, because his
>  > teacher is telling him his writing is inaccurate because
>  > such and such a preposition governs some 'ablative' case
>  > he has no practical concept of (other than it sometimes
>  > seems a bit like the dative, which he uses a lot), whereas
>  > in the same circumstance that Gaulish guy on the market
>  > stall is using what sounds to Octavio like the nominative,
>  > but his Chattian grandfather, who quite frankly doesn't
>  > speak Roman so well anyway (and whom they say has never
>  > been right in the head since one of Varus' lot nearly did
>  > for him 50 years back at Teutoberg) keeps cuffing him
>  > around the ear, muttering "it's under*me*, not under *I*,
>  > ignorant boy," or something like that.
>  >
>
> /Pendecht
>

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/ BP