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Would it be even possible to lose cases? | ||
Tags: Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 9 of 35 11 October 2011 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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And why did Bulgarian preserve its tenses, while polish lost them?
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 10 of 35 11 October 2011 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
German is currently losing its genitive case, replacing it by a construction that uses the dative. There is even a book about this called "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod". 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| H.Computatralis Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6305 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Polish*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Latin | Message 11 of 35 11 October 2011 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually, it's happening in Polish right now. The vocative case is slowly falling out of use except for emphasis and I wouldn't be surprised if it became completely forgotten within the next century. There's also the denasalization of final ę. This is a regular phonological change - i.e. it happens in all cases regardless of the grammatical situation. But there are some cases which are distinguished only by the final e or ę sound. I'm not saying that this will happen in Polish, but this is a possible path. First, phonological distinctions are lost. Once two cases are identical in all situations then they merge into one.
As for the other way around, I think it's quite possible. This Wikipedia article even suggests that it's a trend for languages to go from analytical, to agglutinative, to fusional, to analytical, and so forth. Edited by H.Computatralis on 11 October 2011 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 12 of 35 11 October 2011 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've heard this, although not yet read the book. What do you think is driving this change? I know that as English native speakers, when we can't think "on our feet" of the correct German genitive, then we cop out and use "von" plus dative, but I can't think that German native speakers would think like this. Presumably this form of the genitive will not be lost: Karls Haus. Marias Buch. Or what do you think? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 13 of 35 11 October 2011 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not only were Bulgarian tenses preserved over the centuries, but they were elaborated upon and expanded. I would guess that part of it is the influence of neighboring languages actually adding on to the verbal system of Bulgarian (ex. - the renarrative mood is thought to have come from Turkish influence). I'm sure that after the case system of Bulgarian collapsed, it was much easier to reconfigure and expand on the verbal system now that the relationship of certain cases to the use of certain verbs didn't exist anymore. Another factor is the trend in Bulgarian towards analytical sentence structures. The simple verbs in Bulgarian are the present, aorist, imperfect, past participle (active and passive), and present active participle tenses, with their respective perfect and imperfect aspects as well as some other forms that don't come to mind at the moment. All other verbal forms are made up of several verbs connected together, each with their own tense, aspect, and whatnot. This is really a great example of analysis in Bulgarian since a phrase like "щял съм да съм ял" in reality is four conjugated verbs and a conjunction that make up one verbal form together. Edited by Kartof on 12 October 2011 at 4:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5409 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 14 of 35 12 October 2011 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yiddish, as spoken by Hasidic Jews in America, is losing his case system. No one has really studied it thoroughly but some say it could be due to living in an English speaking area. More on the subject in this article. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 15 of 35 12 October 2011 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's written about lose of genders, not cases.
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| tricycle Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5664 days ago 99 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French | Message 16 of 35 12 October 2011 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
This isn't a non-native speaker thing at all: the use of "von + dative" is quite normal and widespread as a genitive replacement in the spoken language. Even prepositions that are "supposed" to take the genitive are often used with the dative ("wegen dem Wetter" being more natural in conversation than the actually correct "wegen des Wetters"). For the 's' genitive examples you gave, I'd be far more likely to use the construction "das Haus von Klaus" but perhaps a native speaker should weigh in here. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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