tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 10 23:13:36 2000
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Re: Deixis and direction
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: Deixis and direction
- Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 02:13:16 EDT
In a message dated 7/7/2000 5:22:24 PM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:
<< Albert Arendsen:
>I'm inclined to disagree with the usage of Genitive here. The Genitive
>is the second case in German, Latin, Greek - even in Suomi which is
>totally unrelated to Germanic and Romanic languages. The Genitive is
>used to indicate possession. /betleHwIj/ is a Genitive. >>
Try to remember: terming the number and/or order of cases is an arbitrary
designation made up by linguists over the ages. Genitive did not have to be
considered the second one on the table when we studied Latin, etc. When I
studied Chinese, we dismissed the idea of grammar as much as possible. We
learned by speaking--using--until we deduced what is correct. Until the last
100 years or so, Chinese did not know what grammar is. The idea and
terminology all came from Western grammarians.
peHruS