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Re: Noun cases in Tirelat

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Friday, September 19, 2008, 4:22
Logan Kearsley wrote:

> I've got something similar going on in Gogido. I started out with the > idea of theta-particles, which are sort of like case markers in that > they can attach to any noun and they tell how that noun functions as > an argument to the verb, and prepositions. But, since there are lots > of places where the semantics of verb-arguments vs. noun-modifiers > overlap, like locatives. One could separate things by having one class > of words (theta-particles) that can only be used for > verb-relationships (basically, adverbial prepositions), and another > class of words (prepositions) that can only be used for > noun-relationships (adjectival prepositions), but that seems inelegant > since Gogido doesn't distinguish adjectives and adverbs otherwise, and > it makes more sense to use just one word for the same relation whether > it's supposed to mark a verb argument or a noun modifier
The "adverbial-preposition" vs. "adjectival-preposition" could be a good idea for Tirelat, though. I'll have to consider that. What I've been calling "cases", with the exception of the "oblique / genitive", are all adverbial. I do have instances of "za" (of, from) used both adverbially and adjectivally, on the other hand; probably if I examined more texts I might find other prepositions used adjectivally.