Re: Adposition or Case for Ground of Motion

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Chris Bates
<chris.maths_student@N...> wrote:
> Something else I was wondered about that I posted on the ZBB also:
>
> In English, we don't always use "at" with the ground with verbs of
> motion etc. For example:
>
> I went from my home to the cinema (ground: home, verb encodes path
away
> from ground)
> I came to this house from the road (ground: this house, verb
encodes
> path towards ground)
>
> Is there any language that would say something like:
>
> I went at my home to the cinema
> I came at this house from the road
>
> In other words, use an adposition that's always used to give the
ground,
> and not do it in a similar way to English? I know that some
languages
> (eg, Spanish) use the same adposition to indicate location and
> destination (in the case of Spanish, a) but that isn't the same
thing
> since you can see that in my examples the ground can also be
rendered as
> from in both English and Spanish, depending on the verb involved.
> On second thought, go and come doesn't necessarily imply that the
ground
> is reached at least in English, so these might be better given as:
>
> I went at my home to the cinema (ground marking pretend English)
> = I went *away from* my home to the cinema
>
> I came at this house from the road (ground marking pretend English)
> = I came *towards* this house from the road
Hi, Chris.

I don't know about the adpositions:  but, there is a language which
uses one and the same case to express both allative and ablative.

On page 159 of Barry J. Blake's book "Case" (2nd Edition), which is
in Section 5.8 "Inflectional Case Hierarchy" of Chapter 5 "Survey of
Case Marking", he says:
"There are instances where a number of functions are  expressed by a
single case. ... [snip] ... In Tarascan (Chibchan) ... [snip] ... The
locative covers not only location, but [also] the other local notions
such as 'from' [source] and 'to' [destination] (Suarez 1983:87):
NOMinative ACCusative GENitive LOCative INSTrumental COMitative"

My source for this information is the 2nd Edition of Barry J. Blake's
book "Case".  Barry J. Blake was, at the time he wrote the book, and
probably still is, Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University.
The book "Case" is part of the series "Cambridge Textbooks in
Linguistics" by the Cambridge University Press, and the 2nd Edition
was printed by C.U.P. in 2001 and copyrighted by Blake in 2001.
Its Library of Congress number is P240.6 .B57 2001,
and its ISBN is 0 521 01491 3 (its the paperback
that I have borrowed).

According to Blake's bibliography/reference section, his source for
his information on Tarascan's case system was
J.A. Suarez 1983, "The MesoAmerican Indian Languages",
Cambridge University Press.

"Allative" refers to the role of "destination".
Blake's gloss of "destination" is: "the point to or towards which an
entity moves or is oriented."
Blake would rather call it "destination" than "direction" or "goal",
because, he says, "direction" is not "transparent" -- by which he
means, people can't tell what the CVCC you mean by "direction" --
and "goal" has been used to mean both "patient/theme"
and "recipient".
(BTW many languages use just one and the same case for
both "destination" and "recipient".
Blake's gloss of the role "recipient" is: "a sentient destination".)

"Noun-ALL" would be glossed as "to Noun".

"Ablative" refers to the role of "source".
Blake's gloss of "source" is: "the point from which an entity moves
or derives."

"Noun-ABL" would be glossed as "from Noun".

"Locative", "essive", and "adessive" all refer to the position of an
entity, in time or space.

"Noun-LOC", equivalently "Noun-ESS", would be glossed as "at Noun".