Re: DOS (was Re: Re Robot); conlangs with LOTS of cases

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> ObConlang:
>
> What is the largest number of cases you ever built into one of your
> languages?
27, in Degaspregos (my first conlang).  Most of those are local cases :

    wir- ('man')
    Nominative     -s         wiros          Subject or agent NP of a verb
    Predicative      -kso    wirokso       attributive functions
    Essive             -beo    wirobeo       = Latin's ablative absolute
    Accusative       -m      wirom          direct object
    Dative             -bis     wirobis         indirect object
    Benefactive      -kis     wirokis        for the man
    Instrumental     -pte     wiropte       [with the man]
    Agentive          -res     wirores        agent NP in a passive
            [I'm not entirely sure why I kept this one
    Abessive          -psis   wiropsis      from the man (source)
    Comitative       -ge      wiroge         with the man (accompaniment)
    Relative           -rem    wirorem      (indicates obj. of preposition)
    Vocative          -te      wirote           man! (addressing the man)
    Genitive           -so      wiroso         man's/of the man (possession or origin)
    Durative          -dro    wirodro       often indicates transformation, metamorphosis;
                                                          is often used with time expressions
    Similitive     -ndra    wirondra         like the man, as the man
    Associative    -sna     wirosna       of the man, [associated] with the man

    Interior:
        Illative    -to      wiroto     to within the man
        Inessive    -ko      wiroko     inside the man
        Elative     -lo      wirolo     from within the man
     Exterior:
        Allative    -me      wirome     towards the man
        Adessive    -se      wirose     at/on the man
        Ablative    -de      wirode     away from the man
     State:
        Durative    -dro     wirodro    becoming a man
        Essive      -beo     wirobeo    being a man
        Partitive   -pro     wiropro    part of a man

Beyond this, there were about five different numbers grammaticalized onto the noun:
common, fractional, singular, plural, paucal, indefinite-finite. [That's a neat question:
what numbers do everybody's languages grammaticalize?]  Nor did these follow
a statistical universal:  if nouns grammaticalize both case and number, the number-
morpheme usually comes first.  In Degaspregos, it is the reverse of that:  wirosi =
men, wirosia = man, etc.

I now consider Degaspregos trite and very naive, which is one reason why I don't
work on it. It's almost beyond repair. I think I was trying to make the language more
"logical" by grammaticalizing everything you could possibly grammaticalize, which
doesn't really do anything to accomplish that goal, but does make it much more
complicated. (I started making this when I was in 10th grade after a general
disillusionment with Esperanto.)  I also copied many features from other languages
outright: the local cases are, in their logical structure, almost identical to Finnish's system,
and the Similitive case was stolen, even down to the phonology, from Quenya (where it
was -ndon:  <http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/misc/local/TolkLang/articles/Appleyard.Quenya>).
The main importance of Degaspregos today is the effect it had on my conception of
conlanging, and in the way morphology works in most of my languages (very much
less than Degaspregos).

I would take the pages down out of embarassment if it weren't for the fact that I
get so many positive comments about it.  There is, in fact, a cult in Poland that is
using my language for some of their nature-rituals.  They wanted me to write a
'Hymn to Fire' with it, but I was afraid of getting too closely associated with them.
On the other hand, my kakologist friend regularly jokes that, were I to demand
government support for the Degaspregans, I could now hold up *two* ends of the
banner in the street.  (I can just imagine the propaganda:  "Degaspreganer aller
Länder, vereinigt euch!"  Wow, those would be the days!)

> Or the largest number of cases you ever heard of being used in any
> language, natural or constructed?
That I don't know.  The largest I've ever heard of is Finnish, with 17 (or so,
depending on what you count as a case), but I'm sure there's a language
somewhere with more.

> I once made a brain-storming to invent as many cases as I could come up
> with, and found some 60 or so; most of them, however, were local cases
> built by the means of an NEC-style "case construction kit".
That's not as hard as it sounds.  If the phonology has a lot of reduction,
there's no reason to think a whole lot of free morphemes could not
become grammaticalized.

======================================
Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
======================================