Messaggi: 27
Lingua: English
Frankouche (Mostra il profilo) 19 dicembre 2009 23:14:40
Rogir (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 00:51:46
Eddycgn:See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.No natural language is 'older' than any other. They all evolve as time progresses. Nor is there any 'progression' in any direction, some languages evolve one way, some in the opposite direction.
ceigered (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 07:59:52
Eddycgn:Except, Chinese, Italian and Spanish still have a pseudo-genitive construction. The only difference is that instead of using noun cases, particles/propositions/postpositions are used. Superfluous however would be possessing two difference genitive constructions like in English (of, 's etc) (which is how I understood what you said).
I am glad that many languages dropped genitive, totally superfluous. The trend from antique language forms during centuries is that cases disappear. Bedaŭrinde tro malrapide.
See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.
So one could tentatively say Chinese still hasn't dropped the genitive if European cases are used to describe Chinese grammar (after all, if one wrote 中国人的 (zhōng guó rén de - Chinaman's/of the chinese person) as "zhōngguórénde", "de" would appear to be the exact same as a European Genitive case).
Speaking of superfluous, "That book of mine" is a great example
ceigered (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 08:02:25
astroly:Mi iris al TIES domoFor simplicities sake, could one also say "Mi iris al la domo de tiu"?
I went to that one´s house
(I was also gonna ask about "Mi iris al la domo de ili" but that makes me wonder if "de (pronoun)" is allowed... Mmmm)
Roberto12 (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 10:42:39
astroly:What I said was:It's a shame that Esperanto doesn't have a genitive form for nouns like English does.Possessive form of the demonstrative pronoun.
Tiu ----- ties = that one´s
Tiu ĉi -- ĉi ties = this one´s
Mi iris al TIES domo
I went to that one´s house
ĈI TIES filoj estas junaj
This person´s sons are young.
mi mem:It's a shame that Esperanto doesn't have a genitive form for nouns like English does.I was talking about nouns, not pronouns.
[Edited into English, having mistakenly been written in Eo in the Eng forum!]
Eddycgn (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 12:20:33
Rogir:With all respect for your broad knowledge, I do not agree here. I have a book about languages in general, which describes in depth the evolution of languages through the ages mostly in one direction, from synthetic (agglutinierend) to analytic. I would not know a language that made the inverse process, e.g. that started without cases and ended with. Dutch, english (the english saxon genitive is a sort of relict), italian, spanish are good examples. Fresh languages are finnish, hungarian, turkish. On some african languages it is not clear how old they are. Certainly chinese is one of the oldest, and it is one of the most analytical one, no plural, no feminine, no tenses inherent in the words themselves.To discuss this through would take too much space, but it is certainly a fascinating subject!Eddycgn:See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.No natural language is 'older' than any other. They all evolve as time progresses. Nor is there any 'progression' in any direction, some languages evolve one way, some in the opposite direction.
Eddycgn (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 12:34:13
ceigered:You are perfecly right, but I was misunderstood, my fault probably. When I said genitive I meant the case form inherent in the word, like in german, russian, finnish, etc.Eddycgn:Except, Chinese, Italian and Spanish still have a pseudo-genitive construction. The only difference is that instead of using noun cases, particles/propositions/postpositions are used. Superfluous however would be possessing two difference genitive constructions like in English (of, 's etc) (which is how I understood what you said).
I am glad that many languages dropped genitive, totally superfluous. The trend from antique language forms during centuries is that cases disappear. Bedaŭrinde tro malrapide.
See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.
So one could tentatively say Chinese still hasn't dropped the genitive if European cases are used to describe Chinese grammar (after all, if one wrote 中国人的 (zhōng guó rén de - Chinaman's/of the chinese person) as "zhōngguórénde", "de" would appear to be the exact same as a European Genitive case).
Speaking of superfluous, "That book of mine" is a great example
Through the time this is often fallen apart into preposition+word like in spanish de + word, or in japanese word + "no". This type of genitive is not superfluous, of course.
Chip (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 14:09:43
Anyway, thank you guy for being so helpful. Sometimes, I just can't find what I'm looking for and get impatient. Dankon!
Rogir (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 16:51:33
Eddycgn:And what would be the name of that book? Because it contradicts most of what I've learned in linguistics. Besides, how do you determine the 'age' of a language? When did the vulgar Latin in Gaul become French? When did proto-Germanic in the low countries become Dutch?Rogir:With all respect for your broad knowledge, I do not agree here. I have a book about languages in general, which describes in depth the evolution of languages through the ages mostly in one direction, from synthetic (agglutinierend) to analytic. I would not know a language that made the inverse process, e.g. that started without cases and ended with. Dutch, english (the english saxon genitive is a sort of relict), italian, spanish are good examples. Fresh languages are finnish, hungarian, turkish. On some african languages it is not clear how old they are. Certainly chinese is one of the oldest, and it is one of the most analytical one, no plural, no feminine, no tenses inherent in the words themselves.To discuss this through would take too much space, but it is certainly a fascinating subject!Eddycgn:See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.No natural language is 'older' than any other. They all evolve as time progresses. Nor is there any 'progression' in any direction, some languages evolve one way, some in the opposite direction.
gyrus (Mostra il profilo) 20 dicembre 2009 17:49:52
Eddycgn:See Romanian, which kept its cases because it wasn't influenced by the other Romance languagesRoberto12:You can use de, e.g. "it's that woman's" = gxi estas de tiu virino.I am glad that many languages dropped genitive, totally superfluous. The trend from antique language forms during centuries is that cases disappear. Bedaŭrinde tro malrapide.
And sometimes you might need a pronoun, e.g. "I like that woman's (things)" = mi sxatas ilin de tiu virino.
It's a shame that Esperanto doesn't have a genitive form for nouns like English does.
See chinese, more than 3000 years old, italian and spanish through latin.
