Re: all possible cases ;-)
| From: | Padraic Brown <agricola@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, October 16, 2001, 23:19 |
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On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Martin Hinsch wrote:
> I recently subscribed to this list primarily in order to lurk, read and
> learn ;-). However when I was browsing my old notes on language construction
> I rediscovered an old attempt to build a "case-complete" language, i.e. a
> language that completely lacks constructs like 'going TO THE MARKET' (lokativ)
> or 'talking ABOUT SOMEBODY' and instead uses cases (sorry for the lack of
> linguistic terminology, the tiny bit I know is limited to the german terms).
> So the questions are:
> Do you think this is possible?
Don't see why not. (_Probable_ is a different matter!) What you do is,
take all the adpositions in all known languages, sort out their meanings
and devise one case for each distinct use. Ideally, all your case forms
should be distinct (or at least can't be confused for some other case
based on type of construction or associated verb form, etc.) so that
confusion is kept to a minimum.
> Does anybody know the largest number of cases occuring in a natural language?
Probably Finnish at 15 or so.
Padraic.
> Martin
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