Re: Order of cases

Ben Poplawski wrote:

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>>Instrumental comes after Dative, but where it occurs in relation to
>>Ablative, I don't know.
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>I've heard a lot about an Old English instrumental case, but I haven't seen
>anything on it. The best I got was a description of four cases, the same
>ones  in German.
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By the time Old English got to the point where it was written, it had
almost died out - merged with the Dative - however, the demonstrative
and interrogative survived in some genders, as well as some inflections
on the adjective.

It's used for the normal  things, Instrument/Manner and
Accompaniment(only in a few texts), as well as time expressions.

The Instrumental demonstrative (shading into an article) appears only in
the Masculine and Neuter.  It's the same in both - þý suna- 'with the
sun', þý scipe - 'with the ship'.  'with/by this X' is 'þýs X'.  The
interrogative (with/by who/what) is 'hwý'.  Also, for instance, 'with a
good ship' is 'gode scipe' - some adjectival endings survived.

In other words, it was in a similar, perhaps slightly worse place than
the German accusative.