Re: Adunaic case system

> 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?
It's very unusual, although not impossible, for the subject to be less
marked than the object.  (Presuming, of course, that when Tolkien says
the "subject of a verb" he means both transitive and intransitive
ones.)  It violates Greenberg's universal #38: "when there is a case
system, the only case which ever has only zero allomorphs is the one
which includes among its meanings that of the subject of the
intransitive verb."  Roughly, the nominative will be less marked than
the accusative, and the absolutive less marked than the ergative.

Having Subjective (which is presumably the case for the subjects of
intransitive verbs, at least not-fully inflected ones) more marked
than Normal (for ordinary, non-incorporated objects) is thus a
violation.  But #38 is violable; there a (very) few natlang
counterexamples to it so it's not really a "universal" so much as a
very strong tendency.  (I think the Mojave languages mark nominative
with -ch and accusative with -0.)

As for your main question, it seems basically nominative-accusitive,
with Nominative = Subjective, Accusative = Normal, and Genitive =
Objective.  My reasons for this:

-- Subjective is used for the subjects of both intransitive and
transitive verbs.  (I figure if they were treated differently, Tolkien
would have mentioned it.)  That's really all there is to Nominative.
-- Normal being used for direct objects (that are not part of a
compound expression.)  I'd call this accusative with little
hesitation.

The features that make it look unlike an ordinary N/A language are:

-- The subject being more marked than the object
-- Nominative case-marking being optional when the identity of the
subject is clear from verb-agreement.
-- Genitive case being used for object incorporation. (I would treat
(i) -- the object coming right before the verb, getting a different
case than usual, and being treated as a compound expression -- as
object incorporation.)

At least, this would be my analysis, given the information provided
above.  I must admit some confusion over which cases would be used in
which situations.  It seems like he's saying that possessive genitives
get Normal and non-possessive genitives get Objective?  And in the
plural, which case takes over the Objective's function?  I would
figure Normal.  (That, iirc, is how things are distributed in Modern
Standard Arabic: in the plural, there's a syncretism of accusative and
genitive usually called the "oblique".)

Given some further examples I figure we could puzzle out a better
analysis.  The folks on the ELFLING list might be of further help,
too.  Good luck.
--
Patrick Littell
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Spring 05 Office Hours: M 3:00-6:00

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