Re: Case

On Fri, 9 Jul 1999, nicole wrote:

> 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
>=20
> I'm just curious, but those of you who do use case in your language, how
> many do you have?  Where does it go from being "cool" to just plain
> unworkable?
>=20
I'm currently engaged in reanalyzing the Denden system of adpositional
particles, and I've decided to term these 'case particles', after all,
all these particles belong to the same formal class and most of them
have meanings that look a lot like traditional cases. What put me on to
this was the analysis of the particle _tan_ I've posted here a while ago.

What I have at the moment is (haven't counted them):

Cases

Verbal arguments:

instrumental:         hye INST 'with'
dative:               lye DAT 'to'

Nominal relationships

genitive:             oib GEN 'of'
possessive:           lua POSS 'of'
comparative:          logh COMP 'like'
relative:             tan RTV
ornative:             daxa ORN
sociative:            dandir SOC 'together'
comitative:           quat ~ y COM 'with, together, and'
             =20

Locative cases

   Location
  =20
      locative:      ar            LOC (essive in Finnish)  'at'

      Interior

         inside:     yomurin       INESS inessive    'in, inside'
     =20
      Exterior
       =20
         adessive:   wau           ADESS 'at', 'close by'
         outside:    nil           EXESS exessive    'out, outside'
        =20
      Position
      =20
         front:   atahl            FRONT frontive    'in front of'=20
         behind:  qe ~ ke ~ che    POST  postive     'behind of'
         between: canuin ~ can     INTRA intrative   'through', 'between'
         around:  tayr             TEG   tegimentive 'around, covering'

         superessive:  yulish SUPER1 'on top of'
         subessive:    naha   SUBESS 'under'

   Source

      partitive:  cu ~ zu PARTI 'in'

   Destination
  =20
      translative: asfran TRNSL  'towards'
  =20
      Interior
     =20
         illative: cashe ILLA 'going inside (deeply)
     =20
      Exterior
     =20
         allative:  yohal ALLA 'towards'
    =20

possessive locative:=20

perlative:          matan PERLA 'along(side)': e.g. walking alongside a=20
                                 river
tangentive:         par   TANGA 'going along, while touching':=20
                                 stroking someone along his back

Others:

privative:         tu     PRIV 'without, missing'

All particles can used either as a preposition or as a postposition, depend=
ing
upon the preference of the speaker/author. I'm working on examples, like:

=2E   soi  hye  s=FCmzi ka, tan dasir  hod'shulas ga, daha.
    wine INST drunk TOP TAN 3pfMGH head.mist  NOM tomorrow=20
    They're drunk with wine, they'll have a misty head, tomorrow.

=2E   dabbe ca   qiri.ri e.do       penresh hye  tau.qireze.za
    paint into eye,DUP poss.1sMGH spatter INST NEG.see.EXP
    Because the paint spattered into my eyes I couldn't see.

=2E   Tan lauy=E8 purgat.dir cyun.cyun gelaw tayde   Hamal ga  zunga.dan
    RTV well  god.p      very.DUP  angry because Hamal NOM curse.AGP
    The gods of the well are extremely angry because Hamal is one=20
    who curses.
   =20
=2E   S=E9or  oib Tacal verech.zi ga, sero  gedir.ju  doxaz ajun.
    sword GEN Tacal old.AUG   NOM 1sHGH think.CRT 1000  year
    Tacal's sword is very old, I think a thousand years.
 =20
=2E   Klonlyan lua   Pal     cuyinleng   lyantara. Lyantara  ka  arayachar=
=20
    palace    POSS emperor outstanding beautiful splendour TOP glory

    lua  Pal.zi      pela       y   lyaunya lua  Charya ga.
    POSS emperor.AUG symbolize  COM pride   POSS Charya NOM.=20

    The palace of the emperor is outstandingly beautiful. The splendour
    symbolizes the glory of the great emperor and is the pride of Charya.
 =20
=2E   lyan   qoron.yi daxa ga
    beauty face.DIM ORN  NOM
    She has a pretty face
   =20
=2E   maile qurejale    yar  daxa Quandiyal teshitlo'ar nahan.
    shirt see-through long ORN  Quandiyal market.LOC  go

    Leng.leng qureray ga!
    very.DUP  nice    NOM

     Quandiyal went to the market wearing a long, gauze maile.
     It looked very nice.
 =20
And so on... These examples have been taken from the preliminary
grammar of Denden on my webpage, where you can find them complete
with RealAudio files for most of the examples.

But since these cases don't come with an elaborate inflectional system,
I don't have much trouble using them. And anyway, every for every case=20
particle the relative particle _tan_ can be substituted!

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt