Order of cases

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:19:20 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>        m.sg.  n.sg.  f.sg.  pl.
>   NOM  der    das    die    die
>   ACC  den    das    die    die
>   DAT  dem    dem    der    den
>   GEN  des    des    der    der
Why do you use this particular order?

Standard German order (as much as it has one) is NOM-GEN-DAT-ACC. This
is so common that some even use e.g. "dritter Fall" (third case) for
"Dativ", etc. (Interesting snippet: IIRC, "case" in this sense comes
from Latin "cadere" 'to fall', from the idea that the oblique cases
"fall" away from the nominative; the German "Fall" is, I presume, a
straight translation of this.)

When I saw a book in English for English people learning German, I
remember being surprised that it had NOM-ACC-(don't remember the order
of the other two).

Is it because NOM=ACC for three of the four cases? Or some sort of
"core" vs "oblique" thing? (Is "core" the right word I'm looking for
here?)

ObConlang: if your conlang uses IE-oid cases, in which order do you
typically list them?

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!

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