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Declined nouns

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tarvos
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 Message 17 of 33
26 June 2013 at 12:32pm | IP Logged 
Dutch has lost its genitive in the same manner that the Scandinavian languages have. You
can use a genitival phrase to sound poetic, archaic, or to avoid repeating "van" which is
the usual construction for genitives and possessives. Dutch can even revert to a
garpegenitiv.

De tand des tijds is a genitive for example, but it's a set phrase implying the passage
of time. "de vader des huizes", etc. Dutch doesn't really use the genitive productively
in any way and any standard formulation of Dutch does not include it, unless you are
citing older Dutch, using a fixed expression, or avoiding repetition. It often sounds
poetic in book titles "De steen der wijzen" as opposed to "De steen van de wijze".
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Marikki
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 Message 18 of 33
26 June 2013 at 7:37pm | IP Logged 
caam_imt wrote:
For Finnish, the number of cases would be 15. Since the accusative sometimes looks like
the nominative or genitive, some people don't count it as a separate case. Perhaps the
figure of 16 comes from cases that appear outside the standard language? at least I
remember that the dialect of Savo has an extra case.

Other languages with cases would be Icelandic and Faroese and the other Slavic languages
(does Bulgarian count?).


I think the prolative case is alive and kicking in Finnish but it is almost always left out when Finnish cases are being listed. Wikipedia explains its use pretty well.

Prolative case

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Henkkles
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 Message 19 of 33
26 June 2013 at 10:25pm | IP Logged 
I think it's because it can't be used with all nouns without some confusion. I do love it though.

For example:
"Hän levittää sanomaansa musiikitse" vs. "Hän levittää sanomaansa musiikin kautta"

A case we should really bring to the language is the excessive. It would make the third three-case group. You should read about it and try to use it and teach it to people.

I'm very interested in why so many IE languages have lost grammatical cases. Does anyone know of a good study about this or a theory?

Edited by Henkkles on 26 June 2013 at 10:30pm

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caam_imt
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 Message 20 of 33
26 June 2013 at 11:32pm | IP Logged 
According to Wikipedia, the exessive case is indeed the one that appears in the Savo
dialect. I wonder why it was not incorporated into the standard language.

Do you guys use the prolative a lot? I admit I'm not very creative with it and just
actively use the usual "puhelimitse", "sähköpostitse", etc.

I'd also like to see some kind of study about why languages lose their cases. I've heard
that languages tend to simplify over time, but that sounds as if native speakers had
issues handling cases (which I don't think is the case).
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Serpent
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 Message 21 of 33
27 June 2013 at 12:55am | IP Logged 
When one thing is simplified, something else gets more complicated. Latin had a free word order, for example, the modern Romance languages don't.
Afaiu in this case (lol) it was due to the endings becoming less clear and obvious as the sound system and stress system changed. See this.
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stelingo
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 Message 22 of 33
27 June 2013 at 2:01am | IP Logged 
Old English.
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darkwhispersdal
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 Message 23 of 33
27 June 2013 at 9:48pm | IP Logged 
Sanskrit has eight cases (Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative, Locative, Vocative and Instrumental) in the singular, dual and plural. Hittite has eight cases as well (same as Sanskrit although no dual), Avestan has cases (it may be six I can't remember if it has vocative or ablative cases) and Old English has four cases that I know of (Nom, Acc, Gen, Dat).
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Iversen
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 Message 24 of 33
28 June 2013 at 1:26am | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
Dutch has lost its genitive in the same manner that the Scandinavian languages have. You can use a genitival phrase to sound poetic, archaic, or to avoid repeating "van" which is the usual construction for genitives and possessives. Dutch can even revert to a garpegenitiv.


Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have certainly not lost their genitival -s, and unlike English this ending is applied even to things, abstract entities and whole phrases (which has lead some grammarians to dispute that it could be a case ending at all - but who cares?). And we don't have a Nordic alternative to Dutch "van", so the future of -s seems bright.




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