Re: A New Conlang For Your Consideration

John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

>>>>>>>>
takatunu scripsit:
> But then why have n different "genitive" cases? ;-)
Well, there's a fundamental distinction between "my chair" (the one
I happen to be sitting on) and "my chair" (the one I own); and there
can even be a distinction between "my heart" (in my chest) and
"my heart" (in a jar on my desk).
<<<<<<<

What I meant was--no criticism or suggestion implied--that this kind of
sorting out of genitives implies relations between regens and rectum whose
nature I find is not so different from the ones underlying "right-hand"
final cases. It is drawn from the "most likely" relations between
both words (rectum AND regens) based on their respective semantic contents.
An instrument or a facility will number its user as a likely regens so their
relation often looks a valid basis for a genitive. Same with parts-wholes,
relatives-relatives, organs-bodies, etc. But if I were to call "genitives"
all the predicates, relations or situations that can take the words "woman"
or "horse" as one of their arguments, then I would have more than 1000
genitive cases. That's why I'm impressed by John Quijada or Rick Morneau's
works but I have the feeling that they kind of list the "best-of" among all
"hyperlinks" existing between the Webster's 30,000+ entries and then they
give a name to each such hyperlink. I find it very convenient for my own
vocabulary building :-) but I suggest some natlangs already found a better
solution: they just express cases an relations by their names, not by
abstract tags swelling the vocabulary. Indonesian "sebab" just means
"cause", Japanese "tame" means "purpose" and English "because" stems from
cause. (I know this one is not a case on Quijada's page.)

µ.