Re: Cases, again

Mad Martin wrote (I mean no disrespect--I think it's a cool accident based on
your e-mail!):

<< 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 other words, in the sentence "the
man stands beside the river" if there is no case for "beside"
(Adessive?) but we do have the four cases mentioned above, which of
those cases should be used for the noun "river"? Or should there be a
separate fifth case that is used in these situations, a sort of
catch-all, miscellaneous case?>>

While your language will only have these four cases, will it also completely
lack any kind of adposition?   If you'll recall, Latin also doesn't have a
case for "beside", but it makes do with a preposition and the ablative.   What
you'll have to develop with your language is a default case.   In Latin it's
ablative; in German dative.   What this default case does is it gets assigned to
something that needs a non-nominative case, but which shouldn't get any other
case, for some obvious reason.   So, for "The man stands beside the river",
you'll probably get, "Man-NOM. stands beside river-DAT.", where you have a
preposition for "beside" (or towards, or at, or near, or something).   You can use
this kind of a system to your advantage to reduce the number of adpositions
you'll need.   So, for example, you could have:

Man-NOM. stands *at* store-DAT. = "The man stands/is at the store."
Man-NOM. goes *at* store-ACC. = "The man goes to the store."

What this establishes is that the object of a preposition will be in the accus
ative, if the preposition is to convey some sort of motion, and in the dative
otherwise.   With that established, you now have a way to distinguish the
following:

Man-NOM. ran *in* house-?

If you assigned the dative case to the objects of *all* prepositions, then
you'd have to create two prepositions (or more verbal morphology) to distinguish
"The man ran into the house" from "The man ran while being inside the house".
  Now you've got a convenient way to distinguish the two:

Man-NOM. ran *in* house-ACC. = "The man ran into the house."
Man-NOM. ran *in* house-DAT. = "The man ran while inside the house."

You can also have your cases do neat things.   So, for example, you can have
a class of prepositions that assign genitive case to their objects, for
whatever reason (usually a semantic one).   Or, even better, you can show where your
prepositions came from based on the case they assign.   So, prepositions that
were originally derived from verbs will assign the accusative or dative case,
based on the rules listed above, but prepositions that were derived
originally from nouns or adjectives will assign the genitive case to their objects.
So, maybe you'll have:

Man-NOM. walk *run* grass-ACC. = "The man walked *along* the grass."

and...

Man-NOM. walk *head* rock-GEN. = "The man walked on top of the rock."

So there's loads of fun stuff you can do.

<<Thanks for taking time to answer my questions. I know it's probably
basic stuff to all of you.>>

There's no such thing as basic stuff when it comes to language creation.
There's stuff better swept under the rug, though, lest you start thinking about
it too much (e.g., "What *is* a language?", and "How do we *really* process
language?"), but nothing's basic.   Oh, IMIDSMHOOOC.

-David
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"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
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