Re: Looking for a case: counting

On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...> wrote:

> I very well understand that 'times' is a plural noun,
> syntactically, in French like in English, like in
> Russian (mnogo raz)
  Russian <mnogo raz> is not a simple noun phrase, but it's in
accusative. In Slavic languages a number of temporal adverbial
expressions is formed by accusative. The inflection is disguised in
<mnogo raz> (it's concealed by the numeral agreement), but it's
clear in constructions with female singular nouns, like <kazhduyu
nedelyu> 'every week' (e.g. in "I do every week the same").

  Therefore I think that English <many times>, <every week> etc.
are also in accusative, just as <with hammer> is in instrumental.
The construction is the same in both cases.

  In Hungarian <many times> is expressed usually by multiplicative
"case": <sok.szor> [Sok.sor] (<sok> 'many, much' <-szOr>
multiplicative marker). But in elegant style, you can say it using
instrumental: <sok alkalom.mal> [Sok OlkOlom:Ol] lit. 'with many
occasion[s]', or using locative (inessive to be precise) <sok
eset.ben> [Sok ESEtbEn] lit. 'in many instance[s]'.

  By the way, as far as I know the phrase <in many instances> is
also possible in the meaning 'many times' in English.

> I don't think that 'with a hammer' is an adverbial concept. I never
> thought of hitting something 'hammerly'.
  I have a sample sentence from a discussion forum: "and then got
out of the car and beat him manually". When you beat <manually>,
you beat <with your hands> (or: <by hands>). When you see something
<with your eyes>, you perceive it <visually>. When a prepositional
(or: disguised accusative) phrase complements the predicate, it's
an adverbial concept.

  Modern Hungarian grammars don't use the IE "case" concept for the
Hungarian language at all, we talk about e.g. "objective adverb[ial
phrase]" (instead of noun phrase in accusative), "adverbial
terminal suffixes" (instead of case markers, inflectional
suffixes).

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