Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

Roger Mills wrote:
>
> >
> >In my conlang, tentatively called Ajuk, I've got seven cases:
> >Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive, Vocative, Ablative, and
> >Instrumental. I've gotten to the point where I have to divvy up the
> >preposition structure, and I realize that each in a language with case
> >the nouns in a prepositional phrase have to go into a certain case,
> >depending on the preposition and the meaning intended to be assigned to
> >it.
> >
> >At first I was intending to make a system like in German, but that only
> >covers four of my seven cases. The Vocative doesn't neccessarily need
> >any, because it is fairly limited in it's use.
> >
> >So what I want to know is, is there any particular system by which the
> >prepositions are divided up in the case structure, or is it different
> >from language to language, even in languages containing the same cases?>
>
>     As you may know, Latin used only two of its 5 cases with preps.--
> accusative where the prep. indicated "motion to, toward, in, into, on, "
> ablative where it was "motion from, out of, away from" as well as
> instrumental. A few preps. could take either case, with change of meaning.
> Some govern one case or another without any apparent semantic basis-- sub
> 'under' + abl.    Plus a few plain acc. forms with locative meaning-- Romam,
> domum.   Interestingly too, a few verbs governed cases other than
> accusative-- memini 'remember' + genitive, utor 'use' + ablative.
>
I'm going to use the change of meaning by case, and I've decided that if
I've got a preposition meaning "under", or something like that, putting
it in the ablative means "from under", like this (I'm making up verbs
and nouns as I go along, but the morphology is pure Ajuk):

Ukhap          erap      fanapama              lon     ukhotaj
ladeshaj.
[def.masc.nom] [man.nom] [shout.masc.past.1st] [under] [def.inam.dat]
[car.dat]
The            man       shouted               under   the
car.

Ukhap          erap      fanapama              lon     ukhotom
ladeshom.
[def.masc.nom] [man.nom] [shout.masc.past.1st] [under] [def.inam.abl]
[car.abl]
The            man       shouted            from under the
car.

Y'see? I just need to figure out if I'm going to use those cases, and
stuff like that. Also, I'd like to have the prepositions spread out over
the case system as widely as possible, maybe something like this:

Nom.:  None
Acc.:  Motion and such
Dat.:  Location, time of action
Gen.:  Reasons for action
Voc.:  None
Abl.:  Origin of action
Inst.: I don't know. I have things such as "He injured Bob severely with
a brick", expressing "with a brick" as "eba", using the instrumental
case. Any ideas?

>        Most Indo Eur. langs. IIRC never used the nom. or voc. after preps.
> -- but that doesn't mean _you_ can't  ;-)
>
Well, I'm not doing to use the voc., because it's pretty rare and
limited in it's use, and a case that rare isn't going to spawn any
prepositions if I can help it. I was thinking of a language the other
day that only had the nom. and acc. cases, and used prepositions to
express everything else. Preps. pertaining to motion would go under the
acc., others would go under the nom. I'm too far along in Ajuk to
completely redo the case structure though, I've grown rather fond of
mine.

> >Another thing, I've got pronouns that mean things like "for that
> >reason", "at some time", "in this manner", and such, and I need to
> >decide what case they would go in. This kind of ties into the
> >preposition structure, for example a word meaning "at some time" would
> >go in the same case as nouns in a prepositional phrase with a
> >preposition meaning "at". Again, is there any system to this throughout
> >several languages or do I just have to make my own?
>
>     I don't see how such expressions could be pronominal-- more like
> conjuctions??-- but I can see where they might have to agree with the case
> of whatever element they refer back to.  OTOH, consider Latin _propter_
> 'because of' which takes acc. , or purely abl. expression like _simile modo_
> 'in like manner' (probably an instr. usage?).
Well, I'm going to have a word meaning "some time", and by putting it a
certain case, you change the meaning: "at some time", "for some time",
things like that. The case structure would follow the system I describe
above, I guess: "at some time" goes in the dat., which is used for time
prepositions: "zomvanaj"

>
> Sorry I can't go further afield; Indonesian langs. don't have cases; Kash
> uses genitive, dative and accusative more or less like German, but there are
> only a few "real" prepositions.
That's alright. Also, a system similar to German wouldn't help me
terribly much, the German system is the only non-English one I know and
the one I want to avoid repeating.

Well, thanks for your help.

--
Robert