Re: all possible cases ;-)

* jaspax@juno.com said on 2001-10-17 05:59:49 +0200
> > Does anybody know the largest number of cases occuring in a natural
> > language?
>
> I've heard 30 for some Caucasion language (which is more than Nik's 20
> reported cases).  I have no external way to verify that, though.
>
> To do this, you'll have to be selective, though--you can't hope to
> indicate *everything* that could conceivably be a preposition without
> including infinite affixes.  For example, what do you do with the concept
> "under the care of"?  In some language, somewhere, that concept is
> probably indicated with a morphologically simple preposition.
Well, I consider that particular example yet another english idiom, so all
bets are of. What would a romance-lang do in this situation?

AFMC, it would most likely be a stative, with rough translation:
"to be under the care of someone".


t., who picked up a book on the subject today