Re: Case

On Sun, 11 Jul 1999 16:19:00 -0400, nicole <now-im-nothing@...>
wrote:

>OK, to respond to my own post, I may have come up with a solution to my
>problem, tell me if this sounds normal/possible.  (The problem was, that
>I liked have all those cases, but it just got to be a pain).  Would it
>sound possible for a language with a very extensive case system to have
>some but not all cases change into adpositions, which required a case
>all their own?  Say, for instance, all my local cases were to detach
>from the noun and become postpositions (of course, in this case, my
>prepositional case would be postpositional...but anyway), and when a
>noun was used with a postposition it required a postpositional case,
>which had zero ending?
That sounds reasonable. Say you have a case marking on both the noun and
adjective in a phrase: repeating a case marker (especially if it has more
than one syllable) might be felt to be redundant, and the case marker =
would
hang on to the end of the phrase.

tjaitchavalta zelivelta "without green tea" becomes
tjaitcha zeli valta

You can tell it has become a separate word in the second example since it
lacks the vowel harmony of the first example. Yes, vowel harmony and lots
of case endings are signs that Kaltani, or Ancient Elvish, was originally
inspired by Finnish. In the redesigned version, I'm thinking of making it
closer to the Alzetjan Elvish model.

--
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin