Re: Looking for a case: counting

I don't think that 'with a hammer' is an adverbial
concept. I never thought of hitting something
'hammerly'. It is instrumental. It is something quite
different from 'many times', which is a process
quantifier as I said.

I very well understand that 'times' is a plural noun,
syntactically, in French like in English, like in
Russian (mnogo raz) - but NOT in German for instance
(vielmals). I just say that 'many times' is an
adverbial concept, and I cannot see that my mother
tongue is blinding me in that respect, as we say in
French 'de nombreuses fois'.

I maybe misunderstood the point, but I thought that
people were trying to realize semantic concepts in
conlangs. My opinion is that if somebody wants to make
out a language (which is a very hard and long task),
he should ask himself first whether it wouldn't be
interesting to do it more logically that natlangs do.
Otherwise, what could be the interest ? (execept in
case of poetical and irrational conlangs, of course).

Anyway, if I had to make a conlang (which is not the
case at the moment, as I'm only studying these
problems), I would ask myself: shall I decide that
'many times' will be a noun expression, and if so,
what case shall I have to use - question open -), or
shall I decide that it will be, either an adverb,
either just an iterative mark on the verb (and I think
this would be the solution I would adopt, even if it
is NOT so in French or English).

--- Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
> En réponse à Philippe Caquant :
>
>
> >To me, that should not be a case. Cases apply to
> noun
> >concepts. I understand the expression 'many times'
> as
> >if it was an temporal adverb, 'manitimes',
> modifying
> >the sens of the verb 'threw'.
>
> "time" ("fois" in French) *is* a noun, whether you
> like it or not.
> Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to add the adjective
> "many" to it ("many
> times" is no less nominal than "many people"). So
> it's not surprising that
> someone should ask which case to apply to give it
> the iterative meaning. It
> may be adverbial in meaning, but so are any noun
> phrases in a local,
> temporal or instrumental case. "With a hammer" is an
> adverbial concept in
> the sentence "I hit him with a hammer" (it modifies
> the sense of the verb
> "hit"). Does it make the noun phrase "a hammer" less
> nominal? No. It's just
> a noun phrase in the instrumental. In the same way,
> "many times" as in "I
> threw the ball many times" is a noun phrase with
> some kind of temporal
> case. It's only the fact that this temporal case is
> expressed by nothing in
> English as in French that makes you think that "many
> times" is more
> "adverbial" than "with a hammer". It's not, it's
> just the tree hiding the
> forest.
>
> Actually, most, if not all, adverbs in French or
> English are derived from
> noun phrases. Even the formation in -ly in English
> and -ment in French are
> derived from former noun phrases. So there's really
> no such thing as an
> "adverbial" concept not related to nominal concepts.
> "Adverbs" are just
> noun phrases in some local, temporal, instrumental
> (or other such cases)
> case. Once again, you are blinded by your native
> tongue, and cannot see
> further, thus making comments that have no use for
> the questions asked.
>
> Christophe Grandsire.
>

=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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