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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer)
Subject: learning Latin nouns
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Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 18:14:06 GMT
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Not so very long ago, etg10@cl.cam.ac.uk (Edmund Grimley-Evans) said...

>Why is it traditional to list in dictionaries the nominative and
>genitive singular of Latin nouns and to encourage learners to
>memorise those forms?

  Because, excepts for =really= weird words like "cornu" and "domus", 
those two forms are enough to imply all of the others (assuming that the 
gender is indicated somehow, as well).

>I once saw someone claim that the nominative singular and genitive
>plural are better forms to memorise. I can see that there is a
>problem with using those forms in dictionaries, because some nouns
>don't have a plural, or the plural has a different meaning. But
>what's wrong with nominative and ablative singular? Wouldn't that
>make the third declension easier to cope with?

  There'd be no additional information; in third declension, the genitive 
ends with "-is", and the ablative with "-e"; each implies the other.

-- 
                              ==----=                    Steve MacGregor
                             ([.] [.])                     Phoenix, AZ
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        Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!
