THEORY: Morphological Malefactive Case in Natlangs (was: Re: THEORY: Cases of Core Arguments in Clauses with Three Core Arguments)

David, thanks for writing.

I "Google"d on "malefactives" and was unable, looking at the first 10 hits and
at the summaries displayed with the first 100 hits, to find a NatLang that has
a morphologically marked malefactive case, marked with a case-tag actually part
of or stuck on the noun itself (e.g. a case-ending), (rather than an
adposition), that is distinct from a morphologically marked benefactive case.

All of the natlang examples appear to be (judging from the summaries at least)
"readings" or "interpretations"; "connotations", admittedly sometimes
first-choice connotations, rather than "denotations".

Choosing particular adpositions to go with the benefactive-case (if the case system is
that fine) nominal causes the "malefactive" "reading" to be possible or even
preferred.
Example; "My horse died on me" vs "My horse died for me".
(Of course, in English, "me" is accusative, dative, ablative, benefactive, pretty
much any oblique -- what my High School English courses called "objective"
case, because it could be direct or indirect "object" of any verb, or "object"
of any preposition.)

So that means I'm still in the market for any natlang example of a
morphologically distinct malefactive case / benefactive case pair.

Thanks for writing.

-----

Tom H.C. in MI


"David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...> wrote:

[snip]

<<
I see what you mean about malefactive. Do you know a natlang
example?
>>
I don't, but I should. There's one that's just on the tip of my tongue,
I swear! Grrr... I can't find an example. But it really is a case
that
exists in natural languages. One is likely to encounter them in a
Bantu language, an Amerind language, an Australian language,
and possibly in the languages of Papua New Guinnea. Admittedly,
it isn't in encouraging that two of the first three hits are conlangs
(one of them Zhyler), but they really, truly do exist.

[snip]



		
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