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- Title
How big can case systems get? Evidence from Scottish Gaelic.
- Authors
Stewart Jr., Thomas W.; Joseph, Brian D.
- Abstract
It is well known that case systems can be augmented by the accretion of adpositions to their objects. This paper documents and explores an extensive instance of such augmentation, far exceeding any studied to date, based on an analysis of a class of words in modern Scottish Gaelic (SG) the members of which have attributes of both prepositions and pronouns. Pedagogical materials tend to call these forms , yet present the forms in paradigms organized by prepositional element, as if they represented person-number inflections on prepositional bases. This approach does not translate well into a synchronic description, however, because deriving these forms from underlying sequences requires numerous ad hoc morphophonemic stipulations. Regardless of diachronic source(s), these forms are synchronically pronominal in distribution. Shifting to a whole-heartedly pronominal analysis entails a targeted expansion of pronominal paradigms, beyond the traditional 3 nominal cases to 14. Although a number of languages present a richer array of distinct pronominal case forms than those found among nouns (e.g. English, Spanish), SG is unique in the extent to which pronoun case forms exceed those of nouns. Moreover, English and Spanish pronouns show the remnants of a case system, whereas SG has created these distinctions.
- Subjects
SCOTLAND; SCOTTISH Gaelic language; SCOTTISH languages; PREPOSITIONS; PRONOUNS (Grammar)
- Publication
Word Structure, 2009, Vol 2, Issue 1, p108
- ISSN
1750-1245
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3366/E1750124509000312