Re: Case

nicole <now-im-nothing@...> wrote:
>=20
> I'm just curious, but those of you who do use case in your language, ho=
w
> many do you have?  Where does it go from being "cool" to just plain
> unworkable?
>=20
As many have said, it depends. I don't like very analytic
languages, and all the langs I make have case. Drasel=E9q has
nominative, accusative, genitive, locative/essive, and a
thing I call 'comparative case' though it's not really one...
The case marks are mostly agglutinative, since they used to
be clitic postpositions. The nominative case is unmarked.
The accusative case is marked by <-n> or nasal infixion,
formerly a postposition _en_ showing focus. The genitive
<-es> (or vowel Umlaut + <-s>) was _ais_ (it worked like=20
Japanese _no_). The locative <-=FCr> used to be _uyrhu_, a
noun meaning 'place, spot'; and <-erg>, the comparative
case mark, was _ernge_ 'looks, appearance, aspect'.

I think the ancient language also had instrumental and
dative, but it lost them; most enclitics become proclitics
(prepositions in fact), and phonetic change wiped the rest
of the endings.=20

I'd say I tend to use four to six cases for the basic
relationships, and resort to analytical solutions for the
rest. That's a good balance IMHO -- not very exotic, but
it works for me. :)


--Pablo Flores