Re: how many cases is too many?

On 11/22/05, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
> Jim Henry wrote:
> > or 100 (Arüven)?  There are at least a couple of
> > natural languages with more than 20 -- Hungarian,
> > and a language of the Caucasus, I think,
> > whose name begins with a T, unless it doesn't.
>
> It's Tabasaran. 44 cases, according to the LED (Linguistic Encyclopaedic
> Dictionary, 1990, in Russian).
That was it.  Wikipedia allows it "about 48 cases".
I understand in such cases there may be some
disagreement or uncertainty about what is a case
and what is a fairly productive suffix...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabasaran_language

On 11/22/05, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> 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
gjâ-zym-byn has over 350 spacetime postpositions, plus an open-ended
set of derived abstract postpositions.  So 140 local
cases is not excessive.  I would be surprised though if
the 140 local case affixes can't be further broken
down into component morphemes, at least diachronically.
The gzb spacetime postpostions are composed of
an orientation morpheme, a directional morpheme, and a proximity
morpheme.  See:

http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/grammar.htm#postp

--
Jim Henry
esp.htm
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