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From: brg@netcom.com (Bruce R. Gilson)
Subject: Re: Naturalismo e schematicismo, un problema in linguas auxiliar
Message-ID: <brgE2qw4n.3LL@netcom.com>
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References: <57p39d$qa1@oden.abc.se> <59525q$ako@halley.pi.net> <32BAB75F.351B@lonnds.ml.com> <59fcur$hmt@acmex.gatech.edu>
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 03:53:11 GMT
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In article <59fcur$hmt@acmex.gatech.edu>,
STAN MULAIK <pscccsm@prism.gatech.edu> wrote:
>Julian Pardoe <pardoej@lonnds.ml.com> writes:
>
>
>>I thought it was the ablative singular and the nominative or accusative
>>plural.  Italian and Romanian went for the nominative plural and the
>>others for the accusative.
>
>I'd be interested to see those with some expert knowledge on the
>etymology of the Romance languages comment on these developments.  Does
>this have anything to do with the "oblique" cases of Latin that I've
>seen referred to in several places?


Historically, the accusative (losing its final -m as all final m's did
get lost) merged with the ablative. (Short u and long o went to the
same form in spoken Latin, too.) Thus an oblique case developed out
of the common accusative/ablative. The genitive and dative were
replaced by combinations with "de" + oblique (originally ablative)
and "ad" + oblique (originally accusative). 

                                Bruce R. Gilson
                                email: brg@netcom.com
                                IRC: EZ-as-pi
                                WWW: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3141
                                (for language stuff: add /langpage.html)
