Re: inverse constructions

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Charles wrote:
> > I love that idea, but what about dative?
> > Is there any natural language that uses only 2 core cases?
>
> Old French and Vulgar Latin had only nominative and oblique.  And, of
> course, English has only genitive and non-genitive (is there another
> name for that case?)
I wouldn't call English's genitive a "case", per se. Syntactically,
it functions as a clitic, as in "the Queen of England's hat" (but
we've been through that discussion recently).   Don't forget
English's moribund objective case (it's there -- just not everywhere)
-- that would still give English two morphological cases.

I think Sumerian only had nominative and oblique.  It might
have had an accusative... but I'm pretty sure that was included
in the oblique.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Non cuicumque datum est habere nasum.
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        -- Martial
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