Re: a case-free language?

On Sun,  3 Oct 2004 21:00:59 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
>
> > 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?
>
> Well, Hungarian is usually said to have cases - very many of them. It's probably
> the one with the largest number among tolerably well-known languages. Who told
> you it doesn't have any?
Don't ask me where I heard this - but ISTR reading that it doesn't
have (morphological) cases, presumably with a similar argument to
Japanese not having cases - that the affixes are not case affixes but
fused postpositions, or something like that.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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