Re: Compound cases (was Re: Re: Ergative or Vocative?)

----- Original Message -----
From: Danny Wier <dawier@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, October 8, 1999 8:53 AM
Subject: Re: Compound cases (was Re: Re: Ergative or Vocative?)


> Eric C. wrote after me:
> >As you can see, the oblique case is formed the same way as the absolute
> >case. In fact, they may BE the same case. Does that make sense, or should
I
> >give them different markers?
>
> Well, your oblique case could just be the stem for forming all the other
> cases, if you use postpositions/suffixes consistenly for case marking.
And
> you could have the absolutive and oblique have the same form for most
nouns,
> with certain nouns (especially the ones that would more likely be
irregular,
> especially pronouns) having a different oblique than absolutive.
>
> How do you mark ergative by the way?
That's an interesting idea to make the oblique different only in some words.
As for ergative, I mark it with <-w> after the gender marker (so <-aw> for
animate and <-uw> for inanimate, although I've considered using inanimates
ONLY for objects, so ergative wouldn't be necessary.)

The reason I want to keep the absolutive form the same as the stem is so
that it can later go through some sound changes I am planning involving
final short vowels.