Re: Case

  <37860495.77e-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/conlang/?start=27781
> My conlang used to have a really really elaborate case system, with
> probably about twenty five different cases.  Recently I decided to
> change this to just a few:
> nominative
> accusative
> dative
> genitive
> prepositional(?)-does anyone have a better name for that-its for use
> after prepositions, obviously
Nicole,

That's not only a very reasonable system, it *IS* the Latin case
system.  Well, not exactly, but close.  The "prepositional" case in
Latin is called the "Ablative", after one of its uses (by no means the
most common one) -- expressing movement away from something, often with
the preposition "ab" ("away from").

Actually the ablative is kind of a catch-all case.  Most prepositions
take the ablative or either the ablative or accusative (the accusative
is often used with prepositions that have a meaning of "movement
towards").

"Prepositional" is a perfectly good name for a case, but if you want to
be a little more traditional, do like Latin grammarians did, and pick a
common usage for this case and name it after that.  Or even a
not-so-common usage.

Note that if you want a little extra jolt of realism, you might want to
have a meaning for that case used by itself, without a preposition.
Like in Latin, if you use the ablative without a preposition, it
becomes an instrumental, meaning "by means of ___".

You might even want to name the case after its bare, "without a
preposition" use...

But when it comes down to it, there's really nothing wrong with calling
it the "prepositional" case!