Re: Prepositional phrases

Aidan Grey wrote:

>   I'm working on Aelya prepositional phrases at the
> moment, and I wondered how you folks handle them in
> your language?
Tokana has five cases which can be used to express general
spatial relationships, among other things.  These are:

  Dative:  location ("in, at, on"), goal ("to")
  Ablative:  source ("from")
  Allative:  limit/extent ("up to, until, as far as")
  Instrumental:  course/route ("across, along, through, by way
of")
  Comitative:  vicinity ("near, next to")

(The use of the comitative to indicate vicinity is actually
somewhat obsolete.  Other expressions are used in the
contemporary language.)

These cases may be used to inflect 'spatial nouns' to form
expressions for more complex/specific spatial relationships.


>   To the forest: tauran
>                  forest-ALL
Ite' lokai -- "The(DAT) forest-DAT"


>   From the forest: tauro
>                    forest-ABL
Itaul lokau -- "The(ABL) forest-ABL"


>   In the forest: tauras
>                  forest-LOC
Ite' lokai -- "The(DAT) forest-DAT"
Ite' himai loka -- "The(DAT) interior-DAT forest"


>   Into the forest: min    daure
>                    in-ALL forest-OBL
Ite' lokai -- "The(DAT) forest-DAT"
Ite' himai loka -- "The(DAT) interior-DAT forest"


>   Out of the forest: my     thaure
>                      in-ABL forest-OBL
Itaul lokau -- "The(ABL) forest-ABL"
Itaul himau loka -- "The(ABL) interior-ABL forest"
Ite' ysmai loka -- "The(DAT) exterior-DAT forest"

(There's probably a slight difference in meaning between these
last two expressions, but I haven't worked out what it is yet...)



>   Outside the forest: os      taure
>                       out-LOC forest-OBL
Ite' ysmai loka -- "The(DAT) exterior-DAT forest"


>    Through the forest: trea      mei    dauren
>                        thru-PERL in-OBL forest-GEN
Itan loka' -- "The(INST) forest-INST"
Itan hima' loka -- "The(INST) interior-INST forest"


>   I really like having locative nouns ('mi' really
> means 'the inside of', for example) but it seems
> really  needlessly complex.
Is that a problem?  If you have locative nouns, why not use them
to their full advantage?  Of course, if you really want to
streamline things, you could just add more cases...


> Does anyone know anything
> about natlangs that use locative nouns? Or have ideas
> about how to simplify my system?
Locative nouns are common among Mayan languages (e.g., Tzotzil),
and are also found in Oto-Manguean languages (e.g., Mixtec,
Zapotec).  You might want to have a look at some reference
grammars for those languages to see what they do.  One thing I
know is that many of these languages make extensive use of body
part metaphors to express spatial relationships--e.g., "inside
the house" = "at the heart of the house", "in front of the house"
= "at the face of the house", etc..

Matt.

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