Re: Noun Cases

Yes, that makes sense. It was the stem I was thinking of. I was
wondering what form would be used when the word is not in a sentence,
like in a dictionary, or when it is a single word response to a
question. Like, "What did this? The dog." I suppose "dog" would be in
the Nominative case for a language that used Nominative?

I suppose one could have a language where the stem alone is the
Nominative case, and then any other case adds an ending to that.

---------------------------------------------------
Michael David Martin, Master Mason
S. W. Hackett Lodge #574
Free & Accepted Masons of California


On Feb 28, 2004, at 7:18 PM, David Peterson wrote:

> Michael wrote:
>
> <<In languages that use noun cases is there such a thing as a caseless,
>  "infinitive" form of the noun? Or are the nouns always in a case?>>
>
> To say that a noun was caseless would indicate that the noun performs
> no role in the sentence.  So, yes, nouns always do have a case.  The
> dictionary form will depend on the language.  The "base" form is
> generally the nominative in nominative/accusative languages and the
> absolutive in ergative/absolutive languages.  Now, if you consider a
> language like Latin, your idea of an "infinitive" form might be
> represented best as the stem in a Latin noun.  So, for example, in the
> word "domus" (house?), the stem would be "dom-".  You can't ever use
> the stem in a sentence (though one can imagine being able to use it
> form compounds, if you had a language like this), but it's to this
> stem that all the case-endings (including the nominative) get added.
> Additionally, if you had a noun that could change genders, the thing
> that would remain constant would be the stem.
>
> -David
>