🚀 go-pugleaf

----------------------------Original message----------------------------

I forgot to answer Jon's question about pronouns...

>> there are no prepositions but nouns are constructed from
>declinations
>This is a curious point to me. Are the declinations of nouns the same
>as having pronouns but just putting them in a different position in the
>sentence or is there a deeper semantic meaning? I recognise that the
>declination form tends to produce less irregularity in the
>appropriateness of pronouns compared to english but is it different in
>some other semantic way?


Well, this is one of the first things one is taught about Basque.
The declination of nouns is following a similar procedure as in Latin...
Pronouns are a different matter altogether. There are NO prepositions in
Basque, and that means none at all. In Latin, you say things like
`ad nihilo' or `ab oppidum' etc (maybe these are wrongly declined!!),
but in Basque there are no little bits and pieces like `ad, ab,etc',
the proposition is just dropped. So the accusative form gives you
a certain ending for the noun, etc... There are 9 forms I think.
Please linguists out there rectify this if I'm wrong.

So for instance..

`I'm at home' :  `Etxean nago'
`I'm going home' : `etxera noa'
`I'm leaving home': `etxetik noa'

& so on...
(in the last two cases, a preposition is implicit in English --
sort of `going-to-home' and `leaving-from')

Mikel.