Re: Adunaic case system

Doug wrote:
<<
I don't think I've run across anything quite like the subjective and
objective cases elsewhere.  (They're not much like nominative and
accusative.)   Are
there natural language precedents?
 >>

If I undertand these very vague descriptions correctly, then, yes,
there are precedents.  The "objective" simply sounds like the genitive,
only Tolkien gave it a different name.  Possibly to cover cases
like the following:

His stealing of the food.
His killing by the murderer.

Imagine the above were in a language that had a genitive case.
"He" might just be in the genitive case, only in one instance it would
be the object of the nominalized verb, and in other instance it
would be the subject.  Latin made this distinction by using a possessive
pronoun for one, and a noun/pronoun in the genitive for the
other (I always forget which was which).  So it just sounds like an
attempt at a more accurate name for a genitive case (though it
doesn't seem very accurate to me).

As for the subjective, it doesn't sound like a case, but a copula.
Quoting the two examples:

_Ar-Pharazon kathuphazganun_ = 'King Ar-Pharazon the Conqueror'.
Contrast _
Ar-Pharazonun kathuphazgan_ = 'King Ar-Pharazon is (was) a Conqueror'.

One is a noun phrase (the top one), which would need to be
used in a sentence with a non "fully inflected verb".  The second
is a sentence.  So, then, it's not a case, but a copular clitic.  In the
second example, it simply means "is" or "was", and in the first
example it's an auxiliary, and the verb would be in some sort
of infinitival form--hence, the non "fully inflected".

The "normal" is a case only in the sense that the nominative is
a case for common nouns (not pronouns) in English.  That is, if
you want to say English is a case language, then all common
nouns can be inflected for one case--the nominative--and they're
always in the nominative, no matter what construction they're
in.

In other words, this is no more than a misuse of the word "case",
and possibly a misunderstanding of the concept of "case".

-David
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