Re: all possible cases ;-)
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, October 17, 2001, 7:59 |
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En réponse à Martin Hinsch <martin@...>:
> Hi
>
> I recently subscribed to this list primarily in order to lurk, read
> and
> learn ;-).
Hi!
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?
Of course! I've achieved that with my Azak! No prepositions, but cases, and for
very specific meanings you can always use a declined noun completed by another
declined noun instead of a composite preposition.
> Does anybody know the largest number of cases occuring in a natural
> language?
>
My Azak has 22, but it's not a natural language. In agglutinating languages, I
guess you can go very far, but then cases are not much more that cliticized
postpositions (or prepositions, if your case marks are prefixes).
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
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