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Re: Case Terminology Question

From:Harald Stoiber <stoiberh@...>
Date:Monday, July 28, 2003, 2:08
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)

Replies

Joe <joe@...>
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>