Re: Noun Cases

JC John Cowan

JC> Aristotle divides causes into four: the formal, material, efficient,
JC> and final, and gives the example of a house:  the formal cause of a
JC> house is the blueprint; the material cause is the lumber, nails,
JC> bricks, etc.; the efficient cause is the builders; the final cause is
JC> the purpose for which the house is built.

Ah, so my ignorance of Aristotelian philosophy was showing.
I have difficulty seeing the material cause as any sort of cause, at
least in that example, but the other three make immediate sense to me.

JC> AFAICT the most common use of "prima facie cause" in legalese is the
JC> phrase "prima facie cause of action", which groups as "prima facie
JC> (cause of action)", not "(prima facie cause) of action", and means
JC> the minimum facts necessary to make a case, again, at first glance --
JC> it may not turn out to be so.

Thank you.

MJR Mark J. Reed
CG Christophe Grandsire

MJR> Okaikiar has a set of three related cases representing
MJR> origin, point, and destination of motion: ablative, locative, allative.
MJR> In something of a logical stretch, I used the same morpohological
MJR> relationship shared by those three cases for the nominative,
MJR> accusative, and dative, mapping nominative to ablative (the subject of
MJR> the action being where it originates), the dative to the allative (the
MJR> beneficiary or recipient of the action being its "destination"), and
MJR> the accusative to the locative (by default, but there's also an
MJR> argument to be made that the action is taking place at the point of
MJR> intersection with the object).

CG> That's not so much of a stretch, since I had the same idea when I
CG> made Moten. Moten has only three cases: nominative, accusative and
CG> genitive. Those cases have three domains of use:
CG>
CG> - standard: the use their names describe,
CG> - spatial: nominative becomes locative, accusative becomes allative
CG>   (Latin has the same), genitive because delative (what you call
CG>   ablative. Also not too much of a stretch).

Indeed not.  I originally had no genitive case in Okaikiar, using the
ablative for that purpose.  Actually, at that point in time I was
calling it the "elative", so ryour "delative" makes the third name I've
seen for that case.  I changed the name to "ablative" when I learned
the original sense of that case, which makes sense given the name; but
my study of Latin had given me a slew of associations with "ablative"
that have nothing to do with motion away from.

CG> - temporal: nominative indicates moment, accusative indicates duration,
CG>   and genitive indicates frequency.

Now that is an interesting use!  The mapping seems somewhat odd and arbitrary
to me, though; how did you come up with it?

CG> If ambiguity can arise, Moten has two prefixes which, when used with
CG> a specific case, indicate that this case has the spatial or temporal
CG> meaning.

Okaikiar has the same, but with a somewhat narrower scope: the locative
can mean either "place where" or "moment when", and likewise the
ablative ("place from which", "moment since which") and allative ("place
toward which", "moment until which"), there are prefixes to indicate
whether the spatial or temporal sense is intended.  In this purely
disambiguating sense they are rarely needed, but they have another
purpose.  The pronoun "I" (among other words) does triple duty in
Okaikiar, referring not only to the speaker, but in the locative case to
the speaker's location in space or time (the adverbs "here" or "now").
You can put the temporal prefix on the nominative etc. when you need to
refer to the *noun* "now", as in the phrase "Now is the time."

MJR> Extending the analogy further, one can envision a three-way
MJR> relationship between the motive behind an action (analogous to
MJR> ablative/nominative), the goal of the action (analogous to
MJR> allative/dative), and the means used to accomplish the action (the
MJR> instrumental case, here analogous to locative/accusative).  But the
MJR> distinction between motive and goal is kind of fuzzy, so I lumped them
MJR> together into the "causative", using the "motive" ending type.

CG> In my Azak, I have a causative case for the cause of an action (answer
CG> to the question "why") and a case called "final" (not my invention, I
CG> saw it elsewhere. But it was so long ago that I don't remember where it
CG> was :(( ) for the goal of the action (answer to the question "what
CG> for").

The "final" case, eh?  I'll have to think about that.
In a sense they are opposites, but in another sense they are equivalent.

CG> I never found they were close enough to share a single case. On
CG> the contrary, they feel rather opposite to me...

After all, is the motive of an action not the desire to achieve the goal
of that action?  Knowing the one, you know the other.  And FWIW, in my
'lect, "why?" and "what for?" are used interchangeably.

-Mark

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