Re: Class and case

The Bantu languages have a 'repertory' of 22 noun classes,
although no single Bantu language has been found to use all
of them. These classes divide the conceptual space of nouns
into smaller units (there's a class for people, one for some
sorts of animals, and even, IIRC, one for 'things that are
round'). Actually, each noun class (with the exception of
the 'people' ones) can encompass a number of seemingly
distinct categories of things:

Class 3 includes trees and things that spread (fire, smoke,
etc...); certain body parts as well as the body itself;
beings who act as instruments of a higher power (gods,
saints, apostles); some nouns related to verbs; and a number
of nouns with no discernable category (gravy, bag, door,
month).

In my understanding, classes are not grammatical in
themselves, but *do* have grammatical implications (they
necessitate adjectival agreement, if nothing else).

Cases are cases, and indicate the grammatical function of a
noun. (Not always Subject, Object, Direct Object...)

As always, this is my meager understanding... PLEASE
correct!

Paul.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List
> [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of Christophe Grandsire
> Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 3:47 PM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: Class and case
>
>
> En réponse à Clint Jackson Baker <litrex1@...>:
>
> > Simply put, what is the difference between noun class
> > and noun case?
> >
>
> You know it already: grammatical gender, like in
> French, Spanish or German (to
> take a language with cases) or even Latin, is a
> kind of class system (with only
> two or three classes and partly semantic - but
> only partly, since there is
> really no reason why a table should be female and
> a bra male, yet they are that
> way in French :)) -). We talk of noun classes
> instead of noun genders when we
> have more than three or four of them (IIRC
> Swahili has 10. But I may forget one
> or two...).
>
> Christophe.
>
> http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
> Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody
> else play the leading role.
>