Carl wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
{huge snip}
All I wanted to do was to point out some of the factors that make
Latin case-endings simpler than his list suggests and some of the factors
that make Greek case-endings more complex than they might appear if a
similar list were drawn up.
>>>>>>>>>>>
One of the major beneficial side effects of posting silly stuff like my list
of Latin declensions sorted by suffix is that when Carl responds to it the
whole exercise becomes worth while. I didn't find his post boring at all. In
fact I will probably keep it around and read it several more times.
Carl also wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
I am not altogether sure what the whole point of this exercise is. I will
grant there is more than enough ambiguity in the (classical) Latin
case-ending system, but it is not nearly so great as the forms listed
superficially would seem to indicate.
>>>>>>>>>
I understand that the list I posted has some problems. Carl has pointed
out most of them. The most important thing I re-discovered from this
exercise is that the suffixes listed in grammars are not necessarily
morphemes. So the analysis of the accusative ending *em* should really
be broken down into *e* and *m* because the final *m* appears in two
other accusative endings *am* and *um*. This kind of analysis would
produce a different kind of pattern if sorted, a more meaningful
representation of what is going on in Latin noun morphology. This does
not really add anything to what Carl has already said. It is sort of a long
winded way agreeing with him.
(No doubt someone will take issue with the way I am using the word
morpheme here. Perhaps the final *m* is a morpheme but the connecting
vowel is not.)
The kind of ambiguity which I found most intriguing is shown in the
following sample. Here we have the connecting vowel *u* followed by the
morpheme *m* used in three cases. There are examples of this sort of
thing in Greek as well, so this doesn't really prove anything about the
relative ambiguity of Latin as compared to Greek.
second acc mas sing um
second nom neut sing um
second acc neut sing um
third gen mas plur um
third gen fem plur um
third gen neut plur um
fourth acc mas sing um
The benefit of performing this exercise with Latin and not Greek is that
once one becomes too familiar with a language one stops thinking about
structure. Looking at a language which is still rather foreign helps to
make one rethink issues of structure.
Clay Bartholomew
Three Tree Point