Re: cases

En réponse à "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>:

>
> Wow. This simple explanation for accusative/ergative/active is
> probably
> the clearest (in layman's terms) I've read so far. I think I'm
> actually
> beginning to understand it. :-P
>
Thanks! And I thought my explanation was not clear enough :))) .

>
> In what way is Moten's cases "strange"? Just curious to know how it
> compares to Ebisedian. ;-) (OK, so it's on your webpage... but what's
> the
> URL?)
>
It's always under my name in my signature ;))) . But since it's in French, I
may give just a small summary here (not much time to spare :(( ):

Moten has three cases: nominative, accusative and genitive. They normally have
the same meanings as their names imply, but there are also two other sets of
meanings that can fit them. There is the spatial set, in which case nominative
is locative, accusative allative and genitive ellative. And there is teh
temporal set, in which nominative marks time, accusative duration and genitive
frequency. So any case has three meanings, and you must guess which one is
valid in any case. Luckily, there are prefixes used to disambiguate when
needed. So the prefix di- indicates that the case has a spatial meaning, while
the prefix mo- indicates the case has a temporal meaning. But they are
optional :)) . Now, since to make a subclause you treat a conjugated verb as a
noun and use the same affixes as them to mark function in the principal clause,
it means that for instance for a WHILE clause the (already conjugated) verb
must be put in the accusative and be prefixed an optional mo-. Since the
language is SOV and the cases are marked with infixes, you imagine the
result :))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.