Re: all possible cases ;-)

> 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?
Yes.  In fact, I believe there are languages which actually do this or
come very very close.

> 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.  It would
be absurd to have a case ending with that concept, so you'll have to come
up with a paraphrasis--perhaps "care" in the instrumental followed by the
object in the partitive.  From a certain point of view, that will be a
preposition, but most analyses wouldn't support that.

BTW, this is what my language, Yivríndil does with some concepts:
*delaosí a'ennarodi*, "agreement-DAT GEN-clan leaders" "with the
agreement of the clan leaders."  Here, the word *delaosí* is a fixed
idiomatic use of the dative to indicate the quasi-prepositional concept
shown in the English gloss.



Jesse S. Bangs     Pelíran
jaspax@ juno.com
"There is enough light for those that desire only to see, and enough
darkness for those of a contrary disposition."  --Blaise Pascal

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