Re: a case-free language?

From:    Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
> What is it that makes Japanese be described as having no case? Would
> it not make sense to posit a single noun class with, say, nominative
> case ending -ga, accusative case ending -wo, dative case ending -he
> etc.? (After all, in Japanese one can't distinguish between
> adpositions and word endings, since word boundaries aren't marked in
> writing.)
The test of whether a language uses postpositions or cases is
whether, in a coordinated structure, both conjuncts are obliged
to show the form.  Japanese and Korea are said not to have cases
because the postposition has scope over both conjuncts.  Some
languages have both case and postpositions.  In Georgian, e.g.,
postpositions subcategorize for certain case endings, even when
phonological rules obliterate these endings:

  (1) propesor-is-tvis [propesoristwis]
      professor-GEN-for
      'for the professor'
  (2) kalak-s-ši [kalakSi]
      city-DAT-in/to
      'in the city'

When we coordinate these, cases show up on the coordinand:

  (3) ekim-is    da  propesor-is-tvis
      doctor-GEN and professor-GEN-for
      'for the doctor and professor'
  (4) saxl-s    da  kalak-s-ši
      house-DAT and city-DAT-in/to
      'in the house and the city'

Georgian is a particularly good example, since the forms are
clearly cliticized to the NP, and yet equally clearly case form
is being selected.  Incidentally, these kinds of tests show that
one Northeast Caucasian language I studied last year, Lak, has
46 cases, which is supposedly second in the world only to Tabassaran,
also NE-Cauc, which has IIRC 50 cases.

> Why is it that Finnish is described as having cases, while the related
> Hungarian is described as not having any? Is it because Hungarian
> affixes are added to an invariable word stem (except for -val/-vel
> IIRC) while Finnish endings change the word stem?
Most of the literature I've seen on Hungarian suggests that it
has both case and postpositions. I'm not an expert on Hungarian,
but in a book for which I just wrote a review on H. phonology,
the author refers lists 17 cases (e.g. bokorban 'in the bush')
and postpositions (a ház mögött 'behind the house'), although
it's not clear to me that postpositions select cased-NPs like in
Georgian (I simply don't know enough about Hungarian).

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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