Re: R: Re: erg/abs; verbs.

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, John Cowan wrote:

>Padraic Brown wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Mangiat wrote:
>>
>> >*Every* Indoeuropean language uses those endings:
>> >Latin has NOM lupus ACC lupum
>> >Greek has NOM kalòs ACC kalòn < *kalòm
>> >Sanskrit the same and so on.
>>
>> Every? This one doesn't. ;)
>>
>
>Sure it does:  him, them.  Historically these are datives (NHG ihm
>vs. ihn), but then the Germanic dative got reborn from the acc. after
>the old dative died.
Hm. Allright. But the point was to demonstrate NOM = -s; ACC = -m.
Particularly in nouns, since those were the examples given. That just
isn't so in English (except as you say him, them and also whom, which
were originally datives). And there's still no -s. In English we have
NOM wolf ACC wolf. Once the archaic accusatives became dative, they
ceased being accusative; so I don't think that can really count.

Padraic.

>
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