Re: Cases in Banin

On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 08:32:55PM -0200, Lu?s Henrique wrote:
[snip]
> the idea of a case system. They think Banin nouns flect in tense, and that
> the "subject" (this is not a concept of theirs, too) of the verb must be
> past if the verb is past - the other verb arguments do not "agree" with
> the verb. Take the following:
[snip]
> Does this make any sense?
Awesome!!! I must say, this is a very very interesting way to treat nouns.
So you could think of a noun as the being the one in the past -- so when
you say, using your example, "Ada fell", it's like you're saying "the Ada
who was in the past, fell" -- i.e., the Ada who specifically was then, not
now.

I think I'll have one of the descendants from my conlang "pick up" this
attribute. :-) This way of thinking about nouns seems quite close to how
my conlang treats them -- noun case markings in my conlang are very
semantic, and the idea of encoding tense in a noun would not be at all a
foreign idea to the Ebisedi, the speakers of the conlang.


T

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