Re: Gaining cases

Am 16 Nov 2006 12:42:22 -0800 schrieb Jake:

Do any languages actually gain more complicated structures of
conjugations for their cases? For example, could a language, like
English, which has lost its case system suddenly begin conjugating for
the geneitive in singular and plural?

(The word for cases is "declension", not "conjugation".) But anyway,
the two Tocharian languages, which are closely related extinct members
of the Indo-European group, lost four of the eight original cases of
proto-IE, but developed a lot of cases of their own, ending at ten.

A second example of a currently ongoing development:
German is currently developing a declension for some its prepositions.
For example "in" (meaning - surprisingly - 'in') has a "definite
neuter dative case" "im" and a definite neuter accusative case "ins".

These forms have been developed by contracting the definite article:
"in dem Haus" > "im Haus", and "in das Haus" > "ins Haus". But the
uncontracted and the contracted forms cannot be used interchangeably
in the standard language: "Ich bin im Haus" is correct, "Ich bin in
dem Haus" isn't; "Ich bin in dem Haus, das mir gehört", is correct,
but "Ich bin im Haus, das mir gehört", isn't.

Joachim
.

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