Re: [Leica] Even Worse Than Scotches: IE Linguistics

["Dan Post" <dpost@triad.rr.com>]

Marc-
It makes you wonder why they were called 'primitive'! :o)

I guess with no Leicas to talk about, they could concentrate on the finer
points of Linguistics! It makes me wonder that if the languages of man seem
to be more complicated the further one goes back in time, that the
Neanderthals' language must've been something to behold!

Dan ( Barely able to mumble a cursory greeting, most of the time....) Post
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc James Small" <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 5:20 PM
Subject: [Leica] Even Worse Than Scotches: IE Linguistics


> At 10:19 PM 4/3/2001 +0200, Matej Novak wrote:
> >Slovenian language has three differentiations by persons: Singular,
Plural,
> >and Dual (two persons). There are only two other languages in the world
that
> >have Dual as well.
> >
> >It also has three genders; Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter.
> >
>
> Slovenian is a branch of South Slavic and, as such, is descended from
> Primitive Indo-European (as are the languages of most LUGers, from Irish
to
> Hindi, from Swedish to Greek.  PIE had:
>
> Nouns:
>
> three numbers (singular, dual, plural)
> eight cases (nominative, vocative, genitive, dative, accusative,
> instrumental, locative, ablative)
> three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter)
>
> Verbs:
>
> three numbers (singular, dual, plural)
> two aspects (perfective, imperfective)
> four tenses (past, present, future, aorist)
> six moods (infinitive, verbal adjective, verbal noun, indicative,
optative,
> subjunctive)
>
> It also had a pitch accent in place of the stress accent we all know and
love.
>
> How these various attributes wafted down into modern Indo-European
> languages is fascinating -- Latin has the ablative absolute, Ancient Greek
> the genitive absolute, both apparently descended from a common IE form
> which, when the Greek genitive absorbed certain functions of the IE
> ablative case, wafted over to form the Greek genitive absolute.  Russian
> dropped the elaborate moods of PIE quite late, after the time of Ivan the
> Terrible, but retained an almost pure IE aspect/tense structure.  Modern
> English and Gaelic have pretty much merged and abandoned direct modal
> subjunctive and optative usages, but have substituted modal forms of the
> verb "to be" in their stead.  And so forth.
>
> I believe Czech is the last IE language to retain the pure pitch accent,
> though Hindi has traces of this as well, while Lithuanian is the only
> modern IE language, I recall, to have all eight cases in play.  But, as
> always, the needed references are upstairs.
>
> Marc
>
> msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
> Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!
>
>