Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Finnish declension/reply (3)

My Finnish is not good enough to read that, I'm afraid.

The statement that there is no accusative at all is not tenable. Not just historically, but also currently. The nominative, accusative and genitive are used in totally different ways, and they can never be mixed up. If you have a form and you're not sure if it's a genitive or accusative, there's a very easy test: just make it plural. It works in reverse too: if you're not sure if a form is nominative or accusative plural, just make it singular.

What is being described here is really something called syncretism: two forms that are formally different end up looking the same. Syncretism is not unusual and can be found in many languages. Even in other parts of Finnish it's visible: has syncretism between nominative, accusative and genitive singular. Does this mean that has no accusative and genitive at all? Of course not! It just means that they all look the same. Another example is Latin, where the dative and ablative plural forms are always identical. Again, that doesn't mean that Latin has only one of those cases, not two. It just means that two cases have forms that are always the same. And look at English. Its plural form is the same, but that doesn't mean it has no plural form!

In Finnish declension, there is syncretism between accusative and genitive singular, and between nominative and accusative plural. The fact that it applies differently in singular and plural is why you can't say there is no accusative case. What you can say is that the accusative form always looks like another case, but that's different. It's not the same as saying that the accusative doesn't exist.

And I'm not sure what understanding of Proto-Uralic has to do with the current situation. Can you explain what part of the new table, which does not include the nominative as an alternative accusative form, would be confusing for users? I actually think it's more confusing to leave it the way it was. It makes it look like you can always use both forms, which is clearly not the case. They can never be swapped around. You always have to use the accusative in one situation, and the nominative in another.