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Re: Lord's Prayer in Enaselvai

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Saturday, February 21, 2004, 7:52
On Friday, February 20, 2004, at 08:02 PM, Jonathan Lipps wrote:
[snip]

> Actually, there is only one case marking in Enaselvai, and that is "-to", > which signifies definiteness, whereas its absence signifies > indefiniteness. > (In fact, since the system is so weak we might not even want to call it a > case system)
Doesn't look at all like a case system to me. It looks like a suffixed definite article like in Basque, Romanian, Bulgarian & the Scandinavian langs. In fact, it has a striking resemblance to the Bulgarian neuter form of the definite article, cf. selo (a village) ~ seloto (the village) Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760