Re: Cases, again

On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 06:30 AM, David Peterson wrote:

> 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,
Like Modern German or, if we disregard the vocative, like ancient Greek or
like Volapük (which enjoyed a spectacular tho brief success as an IAL
before being eclipsed by the two-case Esperanto). I'm certain there are
other examples.

>> 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"?
It depends upon which case the adposition for "beneath" governs.

>> Or should there be a
>> separate fifth case that is used in these situations, a sort of
>> catch-all, miscellaneous case?
If the 5th case is a catch-all to be used without adpositions in all
situations where the other fours cases are not deemed appropriate, it will
be too ambiguous.

> 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. 
..or the accusative.  The majority of Latin prepositions, in fact, govern
the accusative.

> What you'll have to develop with your language is a default case.  In
> Latin it's ablative; in German dative. 
Yes, 'tis the dative in german, but in Latin the default is _accusative_.

>  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."
Latin does something similar with IN (="in") and 3 other prepositions: SVB
(under), SVPER (over) where the accusative shows "motion towards", and
ablative shows either no motion or "motion from". The prep. SVBTER
(beneath is sometimes included in this list, but its use with the ablative
is confined to verse.

A/AB (from, away from), CVM (with), CORAM (in the presence of), DE (down
from, concerning), E/EX (out of), PRAE (in front of [mainly used
metaphorically]), PRO (in front of). SINE (without) & the rare ABSQUE
(without) are used only with the ablative case.

All other Latin prepositions are used only with the accusative case,
_irrespective_ of whether there is any movement or not (e.g. AD always
governs the accusative whether it means "towards" or just "at, near").

Ancient Greek, with Mad Martin's four cases, was a tad more interesting;
it tended to do the following:
- if the adposition* denoted "motion towards" it governed the accusative
case;
- if the adposition* denoted "motion from" it governed the genitive case;
- if no motion was denoted, the adposition governed the dative case.

For example:
para + ACC. = to (the side of)
para + GEN. = from (the side)
para + DAT. = at (the side of), beside, near

pros + ACC. = towards
pros + GEN. = from
pros + DAT. = at

hypo + ACC. = (to a place) under [e.g. he ran under a tree]
hypo + GEN. = from under
hypo + DAT. = under, beneath [no motion]

*usually placed prepostionally but sometimes, especially but not
exclusively in verse, placed postpositionally. With disyllabic adposition,
  the pitch accent was on the second syllable if prepositioned, but on the
first syllable id postpositioned.

Hope this gives some ideas  :)

Ray
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