Dear Padraic,
Mmm... it also depends on what you call a 'case'; Hungarian has a lot of
what are called cases, but often these are simply prepositions like
"towards", "into" and so on. What does our resident Magyar think?
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Padraic Brown" <agricola@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 12:19 AM
Subject: Re: all possible cases ;-)
> 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