Re: Cases, again

Hi!

Joe <joe@...> writes:
> Michael Martin wrote:
>
> > I've got another question regarding noun cases. In a situation where a
> > language has Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive, but no other
> > cases, what case is used for nouns being used in ways that this
> > language doesn't have a case for?
>...
> In German, prepositions go with either the Dative or the Accusative.
> They go with the accusative if there is movement
> onvolved(oversimplification alert!) and dative if it stays stationary.
> Some prepositions can go with either - 'in' can mean 'in' or 'into',
> depending on the case it's given.
>
> But that's German.  I can't see a reason adpositions shouldn't be put by
> any of those four cases.
>...
For locations, Ancient Greek uses (generally) dative for location,
accusative for movement towards and genitive for movements from.  This
genitive usage is not used in German.

The assignment is totally arbitrary and results from a collapse of
earlier IE cases.  There is no reason to do it these particular ways.

The chaos can be seem in German and Greek as well: if a preposition is
not spatial, it may use either acc, dat or gen.  You'll have to learn
it with the preposition:
    wegen des Autos (gen)  - because of the car
    mit dem Auto (dat)     - with the car
    ohne das Auto (acc)    - without the car

It is worth noting that mit/ohne use dat/acc in German, resp. while
Latin cum/sine both use ablative:
    cum tempore  (abl) - with time
    sine tempore (abl) - without time

Further, some spatial prepositions do not follow the general rule
in German:
    zum Auto (dat)
    to the car
    (we'd expect accusative, due to movement towards)

Tagalog uses dative case for location and benefactive, too, so that is
a hint (but nothing more) from another family that dative might be a
good choice for locative.

I could also imagine a more regular system where genitive is the
catchall-case (but it could be any other one, too) to go with all
adpositions.  Then the distinction between 'in' and 'into' would have
to be made in the adposition (as in English).

Speaking of which, in English, old datives give you the
pronoun forms and thus a hint what happened before the collapse
of the case system:
   to/from/with/without him/her

**Henrik

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