Re: Rromei-Geldyghei lyngvei (Roman-Celtic langs)

[Sam Bryant <Sam_Bryant@atlmug.org>]

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>On Fri, 17 Apr 1998, Frank George Valoczy wrote:
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>> Cases are the six Latin (nom, acc, gen, dat, abl, loc).
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>Um, Latin doesn't have locative (except in a few archaic forms such as
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>"domi", at home), it has vocative ("Et tu Brute".)
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>Not that there is anything wrong with your case system, of course :-)

Well, my first year latin book (Allyn and Bacon 1987) says "With names of
cities, towns, small islands, *domus*, and *rus*, the proposition is not used
in expressions of place. These words express place where by a case called the
locative." It then goes on to describe how you don't need prepositions to
indicate place where, from which, or to which in nouns with a locative case,
you use the locative, ablative, and accusative, respectively, without a
preposition. So it really seems that Latin retains the IE locative a bit more
than vestigially. Of course you're right, it isn't complete, but that doesn't
mean Latin doesn't have that case "except in a few archaic
forms".

But if a conlang was latin-derived, it would be od for it to redevelope the
Locative into a fully used case. I happen to like the locative, though, so I
encourage everyone to use it. :)

Anyway...

ever green
sam