Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Hailman" <robert@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 6:58 PM
Subject: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)


> G'day y'all, I just have a few questions for you.
>
> 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 its use.
For that manner, you may not need to worry about nominative that much.  I
don't recall any German prepositions that govern that case.

> 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?
You're one up on yours truly;   the question never occurred to me.   In my
own Goesk, all prepositions govern three cases:   accusative, dative, and
genitive, depending usually on whether the preposition implies a trajectory,
rest or motion local motion, OR some abstract or temporal meaning.    e.g.
rum + acc. = (going) around   rum + dat. = (situated) around   rum + gen. =
like

I hope the person who knows of such a system will post to the whole group.

Maybe you should try to feel out which prepositions should govern which
cases by intuition.

e.g.

about (gen)
above (acc & dat)
across (acc & dat)
after (ablative)
against (acc & dat)
ahead of (ablative)
along (acc & dat)
around (acc & dat)
as (instrumental)
at (dat)
away from (ablative)
behind (acc & dat)
before (acc)
below (acc & dat)
by (instrumental)
by (dat)
up to (acc)
down (ablative & acc)
except (ablative)
for (dative or genitive)
from (ablative)
in front of (acc & dat)
in (acc & dat)
into (acc)
inside (dat)
like (genitive)
off (ablative)
on (dative)
onto (accusative)
out (ablative)
outside (dative)
over (acc & dat)
past (acc & dat)
through (acc, dat, & instrumental)
throughout (acc & dat)
to (acc)
under (acc & dat)
out from under (ablative)
up (acc & ablative)
until (acc.)
upon (acc & dat)
with (acc, dat, instrumental)
without (acc, dat, instrumental)

These are English prepositions:   you may wish to recombine them into more
appropriately non-English words.   (e.g.   One obvious choice is to make
"to" and "at" one word;   and have it mean "to" with accusative objects and
"at" with dative objects.   There are many other choices to consider.
Also, my selection of cases is not definitive, by any means.)


> 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?
Again, don't know the system, but do have suggestions.

If you're talking about pronouns, it stands to reason that your pronouns
would take most of your cases.   Maybe you could just use nouns for "reason"
"manner" and "time."

Put these nouns into their appropriate cases.

for that reason (ablative)
at some time (dative)
in this manner (dative or instrumental)

It occurs to me that you could have a true pronoun that refers to facts or
events.   We use the demonstratives for that in English.   "All that
[meaning all the facts or events just mentioned] depressed him."   "I know
that [fact]."

pronoun X (refers to facts or events)

nominative (that as in 'that displeases me.')
accusative (that as in 'I know that.')
dative (that as in 'that's what I did it for.')
genitive (of that as in 'the consequence of that')
ablative (from that as in 'from that, we can deduce that the killer wore
nylons')

> Anyways, thanks for your time, and I look forward to an answer.
>
> --
> Robert