Re: Case

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 1:16 PM, Campbell Nilsen <cactus95@...>wrote:

> So, for several conlangs I have nominative-accusative alignment+passive
> voice.
>
> For 1 language which has the passive, there is the construction
> "[noun]+[passive voice verb] by [noun2]". The construction "by noun" has a
> special case, BUT I don't know what it's called.

Well, there are a variety of options, depending on exactly how it works, but
the most likely suspect is the "instrumental" case, found in e.g. Russian.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_case.

  Other languages use a different case, often one with a broader meaning
that serves as a sort of catch-all, perhaps with prepositions governing it
to disambiguate.  This is the case in Latin, which uses the ablative case
for your example (called the "ablative of means").  The ablative was
originally used for the origin of motion (e.g. "away from X"), but the
meaning expanded over time to include a wide variety of other purposes.



--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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