Thagojian news (was Re: how many cases is too many?)

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:08:42 -0500, Reilly Schlaier
<schlaier@...> wrote:

> one of my older conlangs has: Nom., Accu., Dative, Benefactive,
> Genitive, Posessive, Ablative, Allative, Vocative and Insrumental.
I've been following this thread, thinking "Y'know, I ought to add some
kind of benefactive to Thagojian". Lo and behold, I opened up my notes to
do just such a thing, and there it is, right there in the noun paradigm,
and empty row marked "benef.", clearly showing I'm smarter than I thought
I was. All I need to do is dig out my PIE resources and find some way to
fill that sucker in.

Also, I've decided how I'm going to implement the 3-way definiteness
system:

phólun (φωλsν) /fOlun/ - a ball / any ball
oÿnon phólun (οϋνο φωλsν) /oi\_^non fOlun/ - a specific ball
ha phólun (ϩα φωλsν) /ha fOlun/ - the ball

It's not massively amazing, but it's rare that I find something that just
"clicks" and isn't messed around with until abandonment. The number of
things I've scrapped after seeing how ungainly they seemed when written
out for other people to see is staggering.

I don't have a solid grasp on the verb "to look for" yet, so I can't give
fuller examples. I think I'm going to look at PIE *seAg-yo-, which seems
obvious enough, and yields (I think) sakhyë- σαχϊי-, running the rules
 from memory.




Paul