Re: cases

On Saturday 30 November 2002 09:09 pm, Florian Rivoal wrote:
> I am considering creating an inflected conlang (i have not started at all,
> just thinking of it). But i have a problem: I don't know much about cases.
> I could create some out of nowhere(i maybe i will for some) for my lang,
> but i would like first to know what existing natlangs or conlang have. I am
> only familiar with five of them:
        Well, you could start with the FAQ. :) (enamyn.free.fr/conlang/faq.html,
search for "Introduction to Cases.") It's in desperate need of revision and
polishing, but it's a start.

> first question : Am i right with these 5?
        Well, that's one possible system, out of many. I think the bare minimum is
three (assuming an accusative system); nominative, accusative, and
oblique/genitive/dative (pick one). English, for instance, has case remnants:
accusative and genitive show up in the pronouns (me/my) as well as the 's
possessive ending. If there are langs (con- or nat-) that only have two, I'd
be interested in hearing about it.
        There tends to be about four to six "core" cases that show up in languages
with a large number of cases, with the rest indicating location or direction.
The core tend to be (again assuming accusative) nominative, accusative,
genative, and dative, with comitative/instrumental ("with") and partative or
vocative filling out the rest. But this is by no means a hard and fast
rule--violate at will.

> third :What other cases can there be, and what is there use?
        Well, you indicated that you already now about ergativity, but have you
considered an active case system? I refer you to
http://home.swipnet.se/escape/active.pdf for Daniel Andréasson's excellent
paper on active case systems. It's long, but rich on examples.
        :Peter

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