Re: cases

Nik wrote:

> "Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
> > What I disliked was the way in which a Latin-style case system was
> > being foisted onto Romanian, despite the fact that it fits Romanian
> > badly.
>
> Well, from what I understand, the "genitive/dative" is used largely for
> genitive and dative functions.
But my point has been all along that case names are language-specific!
There is no real "genitive" or "dative" function, but there are cases called
by those names.  There are thematic roles often associated with cases of
those names -- possession and origin, and goal, respectively -- but there is
nowhere near universality on what exactly constitutes genitive or dative. A
good look at the various functions of very closely related Latin and Greek
is proof of that.

>  Perhaps "basic" or something like that
> might be better for "nominative/accusative", but "genitive/dative" seems
> fair.
Why basic?  It's much easier to integrate those names into a distinction
already current in syntactic theory:  core cases (which govern S, A and
P roles) versus oblique cases (which govern all other thematic roles).  That's
why I proposed those names in the first place.  That's the generalization:
the cases in Romanian, AFAIK, occupy the same semantic space as those
two groups of thematic roles.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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