Re: cases

On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 10:46:18PM +0800, Florian Rivoal wrote:
> >Are you right with these five?   If you're asking whether a language could
> >get along with only these five cases for its nouns and pronouns, I'd say
> >"yes."
> I know it is possible to get along with thoose one. But what i like in
> conlanging is to create something original, or at least unusual. And
> those 5 seems terribly usual to me.
<shameless plug>

Mmmm. Have you taken a look at Ebisedian's case system yet? If you want
something original, that is. I believe Ebisedian's case system is quite
unique... though I haven't actually seen the systems Jesse Bangs created,
which he said was similar to Ebisedian. If you're more comfortable with
subject/object syntax, then Ebisedian probably isn't for you. In
Ebisedian, there is no subject or object; but all noun cases are "first
class citizens". For this reason, the noun cases have no equivalent to
nominative/accusative, nor ergative/absolutive.

The five cases are: originative, receptive, instrumental, conveyant,
locative. Any of these may serve as a "subject"; their usage is more
semantic than syntactic. Anyway, I won't re-explain what has already been
adequately explained before, so take a look at:
        http://quickfur.yi.org:8080/~hsteoh/conlang/tutorial.pdf
for more info about how the Ebisedian case system works.

Mind you, as things stand currently, Ebisedian can probably make good use
of a few additional (non-core) cases; so if you adapt the Ebisedian case
system you can probably add a few more cases to suit your tastes.

</shameless plug>


T

--
Don't modify spaghetti code unless you can eat the consequences.