Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)

On 2/3/06, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
> I know next to nothing about Modern Greek [snip ...]
>
> Orthography - skip the aspirations and unify the stresses, and here you are   ;)
Which happens to be exactly what Modern Greek has done :)

The three stress marks and the breathings continued to be written
until the orthography reform of 1984 (or thereabouts), but the
breathings had long since ceased to be pronounced and the accent was a
uniform stress accent, so this part of the spelling reform was merely
recognising the _status quo_. (The rules as to when to write which
breathing, and when to write acute as opposed to circumflex were
things pupils had to learn by rote -- not easy, especially since the
vowel length distinctions had also long since disappeared, but they're
really needed to give a clue as to which accent is used.)

> The *real* problem is - what shall we do with the Genitive???
Well, taking the lead from Romance, replace it with preposition +
flexion-less form. I propose "apo" (from, away from).

So "the teacher's book" would become "to biblio apo to daskalo".

Many of the prepositions which governed the genitive in ancient Greek
were replaced by others that govern the accusative in modern Greek
anyway, e.g. peri + gen. "about" by gia + acc. (which also means "for
(the benefit of)"); meta + gen. "with" by me + acc. Some remain,
though, especially in more formal or educated speech, e.g. logo + gen.
"on account of, because of"; meso + gen. "through, by, by means of".

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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