Re: Case Terminology Question

How about the appositive case?  What you're describing looks
to me like the "naming" noun is being used as an appositive.

On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 04:07:57AM +0200, Harald Stoiber wrote:
> Hello, may you all enjoy this day! :-))
>
> Slowly and carefully I get things settled with my current conlang
> al-Nurah.  The name may sound Arabic to you although the language
> has nothing significant in common with Arabic except the idea of
> tri-consonantic roots and the definite article "al". ;-)
>
> Now the introduction to my question...
>
> Al-Nurah has two ways of describing the attributes of a noun. For the
> difference to become clear I will supply instructive English examples:
> "the great Alexander" vs. "Alexander the Great"
>
> In my conlang the first example means that a certain "Alexander" is
> addressed and is described as being great. But his greatness is not
> required to identify him. It's just an information about him and maybe
> not even a significant one - like we can somehow call a cloth
> "green" even if it has only one tiny green spot on it. Whereas in the
> second example an "Alexander" is addressed which can be
> identified among all Alexanders because he is the great one. To
> specify the additional information in the first example al-Nurah
> would simply use the adjective "great" before "Alexander".
>
> The second example will be expressed via a "naming case",
> which supplies an additional "name" for its referent. In the case
> of "Alexander" we give him the additional name "the Great".
> So, preceding "Alexander" there would be the noun "great one"
> in the naming case. The naming case is put on the distinguishing
> marks within the category of the reference noun. In the above
> example: Among everybody who is an Alexander we pick the
> one who is also great - who is of relevant greatness among all
> Alexanders in question. Thus, we can safely give him the
> distinguishing sobriquet "the great".
>
> Now to the heart of my question:
>
> Looking at the above example I decided that it's all about
> giving additional names to a referent in order to narrow the
> number of entities it addresses. Since it's somehow about
> naming I temporarily called the case "nominative case" but
> I am not satisfied since this term is actually occupied by a
> totally different linguistic concept as you and I know. So,
> I am very very grateful for any better terms you may have
> for this. Can you help me out with one? Please! Thank you! :-)))
>
> Cheers,
> Harald
>
> --
> A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.
> (Rabindranath Tagore)