Re: Noun cases in Tirelat

Lars Mathiesen wrote:
> 2008/9/18 Herman Miller <hmiller@...>:
>> Another lesser used case (dy/daj) is one that I haven't had a name for, but
>> I'm thinking of "ablative". Typically, it's used for non-volitional agents,
>> or the agent of a passive verb, which according to Wikipedia are possible
>> uses of the ablative case in Latin, and I've also considered using this case
>> to represent the "source" of an action (one translation of English "from" or
>> "out of").
>
> The Latin ablative is a merger of IE instrumental, locative and
> ablative. It seems to me that your uses all fit the instrumental sense
> of the Latin ablative, so that would be a more informative label.
Hmm... What I'd normally consider "instrumental" (by means of ...) is
translated with the preposition "vjaki". I note though, that wherever I
use "vjaki" it isn't followed by a case/number particle (unless "taj"
could be considered as such).

Other instances in the texts where I've used "prepositions" are also not
followed by a case/number particle, e.g.

šë sera "with people"
myn metti fał "into tiny pieces"
za tadru mikvidu "of many wells"
kejla diižu "after a while"
za kavi riiva "from the black sky"
ba tadru numi "like many tears"
ža zem xostelił "for six weeks"

So some of what I've been calling "cases" might just be prepositions.
The "vocative case" is a good example. I was thinking that prepositions
in Tirełat governed specific cases as they do in Minza, but the newly
created preposition "ki" is the only example I can find. The main
differences with the "case/number particles" are that they encode number
(which from these examples is absent in prepositions like "za"), and
that most of them relate to specific arguments of verbs.

The "locative case" (vë / vaj) apparently can also be attached to pretty
much any verb, so it's really more like a preposition.

vaj    room     saj    ñaj kezyl vy    -byna my     fala  -ri
LOC.PL mountain NOM.PL all plant 3p.NOM-lose ACC.SG sprout-EVENT
"on the mountains, all the plants failing to sprout"

>> The last case (u/aj) is one that I've been calling "oblique", as it
>> typically is not associated with a verb; its most typical use is as the
>> object of a locative noun phrase.
>>
>> vë     lak  u      łivi žeġ
>> LOC.SG over OBL.SG lazy dog
>> over the lazy dog
>
> I'd be tempted to call it genetive, unless you already have one that
> you use for possessors. (Etymologically, of course, 'genetive' has to
> do with origin or source, not possession).
Possession is marked with a possessive prefix, e.g.

vë rugi u kiŕpa "next to the hedgehog" vs.
vë kiŕpa jĕrugi "at the hedgehog's side"

"Genitive" is about as good a name as any for the "u" case, though.

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