Re: how many cases is too many?

Reilly wrote:
<<
one of my older conlangs has: Nom., Accu., Dative, Benefactive,
Genitive, Posessive, Ablative, Allative, Vocative and Insrumental.
how many in you personal opinions is too many?
most of the time i prefer to keep it down to Nom./Accu., Dative,
Posessive and Instrumental.
 >>

I've been waiting for this topic to come up.  ;)  I cannot find my
typology handout, but there is a natural language with over
140 local cases.  And those are just local cases (I think it has six
or seven non-local cases, as well).  So it need not be a logical
language to have a large number of cases.  In this language, the
case forms themselves were somewhat predictable, so I'm sure
that helps a speaker when producing a given utterance.  Anyway,
though, this number dwarfs Zhyler's 57 cases, so it made me
happy to come across it.

-David
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