Re: Cases, again

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 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?
>
Others have given good and useful answers, so I'll just describe the Kash
situation.  There are those 4 cases- nom, gen, dat, acc.  When I worked on
the prepositions, I _thought_ I was following the German/Modern
Greek/sort-of Latin method, but turns out my memory of that was off.

So in Kash, _acc_ is used for location, _dat_ is used for motion, _gen_ is
used for motion away from; a few preps. (there aren't many) take lexically
assigned cases.

Thus the principal prep. of location/motion _ri_ + acc = 'in...., at....,
on....', ri+dat = 'to..., into...'.  These can be made more specific by
using auxiliary words---
ri selim+ni +noun 'on top(acc)-its NOUN' ri seliñi vori 'on/at the edge of
the river'.  vs, ri selim/e/ni vori 'to the edge of the river.'
ri vunuwe/ni... (always dat.) 'in the direction of...., toward'

ri + genitive is idiomatic, only in (1) ri + Person's name(gen.) = 'at/to
the home of...., at NAME's place' and (2) ri aran+i  + Trade name (at
name-gen....) = 'at/to [the shop of]....., at NAME's [place of business]'---
arami ri çenjiyi 'let's (go to) Shenji's place'
ri mami iti hati? [rima'mitixa'ti] or very colloq. [rima'mi?ka'ti] "my place
or yours?"
matraka ri arani "sit surañ" 'I bought it at "The 3 Mountains"
yuno imepu vunu ri arani "cici nula" 'they all headed for The Golden Bug'
but colloq. eya, arami cici nula 'hey, let's (go to) The Golden Bug'

yam 'with', yambit 'by means of' take the acc.; umit 'by means of' (actaully
the verb 'use') used to take genitive, but now takes acc.

alo 'from' always takes genitive; so do uçoñi 'for, on behalf of', inga
'without' and a few others.