Re: Adunaic case system

> But IME almost all Greenberg's 'Universals' are violated by some natlang
> or other. My understanding is that at best they are "universal
> _tendencies_".
Yes, and I specifically mentioned that it was violable.  Although, on
second thought, the only violations I could think of (Yuman languages
such as Mojave) are debatable.  I think Dixon, for one, has claimed
that the Mojave "nominative" -ch is really some sort of ergative.  But
then again, I suspect Dixon specifically uses zero markings as a main
critereon for determining what to call a given case.

> >  That's really all there is to Nominative.
>
> yep - but Adunaic 'Subjective' has other uses not covered by the
> Nominative.
>
Well, having other uses other than intransitive subject and transitive
subject doesn't "un-nominate" a nominative.  (Unless the other uses
include transitive object, in which I, at least, would use a term
other than Nominative.  The Romanian "nominative", for example, is
used for direct objects as well, whereas the Oblique is used for
indirect objects and possessors... but this is an unusual use of the
term "nominative".  I suppose if we were looking at Romanian purely
synchronically "direct" might be more appropriate.)  The other use of
the subjective -- for the subject of a existential sentence -- isn't
an unusual task for the nominative, anyway.

That doesn't mean, however, that I'm opposed to David's explanation of
S itself as a copula.  Seems like the most natural explanation to me,
actually.  It explains away of the two most unusual facets of Adunaic:
subject marking but no object marking and optional subject marking
with fully-inflected verbs.  The fact that the "copula" is sometimes
realized as ablaut instead of "-un" doesn't make this explanation any
less compelling to me, at least.

> > -- Normal being used for direct objects (that are not part of a
> > compound expression.)  I'd call this accusative with little
> > hesitation.
>
> Normal may also be used as subject - see above - and complement of "to be"
> .
Perhaps this is further evidence for the copular explanation, for the
reason that a Normal subject can only *immediately* precede a verb
fully inflected with pronomial prefixes.  We could imagine an earlier
Adunaic with the order unmarked-subject, clitic pronouns, verb.  When
the subject remained in immediate preverbal position, the clitic
pronouns affixed to the following verb, but when the subject *moved* a
clitic moved with it., and eventually became reanalyzed as a copula
and/or Subjective case.

(Same clitic each time, though?  Or maybe different clitics eventually
supplanted by a generic "un"?  It would be interesting to see if there
is any semantic distinction between nouns that take -un and those that
lengthen the final vowel.  For example, if animates got -un and
inanimates got ablaut, it could be from an animate/inanimate
distinction in the clitic pronouns.)

> That's not how I understand Adunaic 'Objective' - it occurs _only_ in
> compounds and reminds me far more of the 'construct state' of the Semitic
> langs. I think equating with 'genitive' is incorrect; possession is shown
> by the prefix _an-_  which is often reduced to _'n-_ (e.g. Bâr 'nAnadûnê
> "Lord of Anadune"; Narîka 'nBâri 'nAdûn "The Eagles of the Lords of th
> West").
>
The big difference between genitive case and construct state is that
construct state occurs on the head rather than on the adjunct.  Some
languages have both; Classical Arabic did.  Take the approximate
Classical equivalent of David's sentence:

"sayyaar-a-0 al-walad-i".
car-ACC-CONST DEF-boy-GEN
the car of the boy

(Like David, I only learnt colloquial, so this is only approximate.)
The zero suffix on "sayyaara" (car) indicates that it's in accusative
singular and construct state.  The al- and the -i on "walad" (boy)
indicate that it's a definite noun in the genitive singular.

If we take "an" to be a suffix, instead, we could claim "an" it to be
a construct state marker.  The orthography belies this, but we could
still argue it.  Take, for example, "Narika 'nBari".  We could argue
that it's the phonological properties of the head (Narika) rather than
the adjunct (Bari) that determines the form of the "an" affix.  After
all, it's probably the final "a" of Narika that elides the initial "a"
of "an", and the "n" isn't homorganic to the "b".

Possessive and genitive phrases aren't always the same thing,
cross-linguistically, although they're ususally so.  Off the top of my
head, Russian distinguishes between the possessive and the genitive in
pronouns -- the genitive series is only rarely used.  Pronouns are
common offenders, actually; Arabic doesn't handle possession by
pronouns with the genitive, either.

> As I have said, Adunaic 'Objective' reminds me more of the 'construct
> state' than anything else. Maybe one should be looking at Semitics langs
> for the inspiration of Adunaic noun forms: Normal, Subjective, Objective.
Proto-Semitic probably had a somewhat richer case system than
Classical Arabic, but still fairly similar.  Here's Arabic:

  nominative singular = -u
  accusative singular = -a
  genitive singular = -i
  nominative dual = -a:
  oblique dual = -ay
  nominative plural = -u:
  oblique plural = -i:

The "oblique" is the syncretism between accusative and genitive in
non-singular numbers.  I noted earlier a similar syncretism in
non-singular Adunaic nouns.  (This assumes that plural Objective nouns
take the zero suffix of Normal nouns; it would be very strange indeed
for them to take Subjective marking.)

Among the Semitic languages, I have a faint suspicion that Berber
might mark the nominative and leave the accusative unmarked.  I'll
have to look that up.
--
Patrick Littell
Voice Mail: ext 744
Spring 05 Office Hours: M 3:00-6:00

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