Re: CHAT: New Member With Questions

On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Brandon Denny wrote:

>I would imagine that group
>members get sick of new members asking the same old questions repeatedly,
>but I'd like to ask some:
Not at all. Everyone learns when these questions are asked!

>4)  *Disclaimer-This is possibly a foolish question*  Let us say that there
>is a language with noun cases (basic ones the system I'd like to use is
>more complex).  In this language noun declension is, basically, adding a suffix.
>
>Example:  N+Non, N+Acc, N+Gen, where N is the noun.
Could be. Latin and Greek do it this way. You could also have cases
without endings (English largely); cases with prefixes or caselike
structure that uses some kind of external word like an adposition for
the functional word.

>Let us also say that we have a few other cases such as an Ablative, "from"
>represented by N+Abl. If I wanted to say, "The Man came from China,"
>would the sentance be: (In SOV format)
>
>Man+Nom Come.Past China.Acc
>Or
>Man+Nom Come.Past China.Abl
Based on (mostly) Latin usage, I'd interpret the first as "The man
came into China" and the second one as "The man came from China".

Of course, your language does _not_ have to operate that way. Perhaps
in the 'proper name' or 'formal place' category of nouns, the meaning
of "from", which is normally an ablative case function, is assumed by
the accusative case. In other words, a built in irregularity! Pretty
cool. You could also mess about with which verb to use in each set
of circumstances.

Thus you might have:

Man.nom exit.past temple.abl
Man.nom exit.past city.acc

>Which case suffix has precedence?  I am only familiar with cases through
>Latin, and I never paid much attention to this subject (assuming if ever
>came up).  Are there languages where this conflict occurs?  How do
>they resolve it?
I'm not entirely certain what you mean by precedence in this case. If
you mean "which case should be used?", then that's largely up to you
as the maker of the language. In Latin, and in all other natural
languages, common usage and evolution through time is what settles
questions of which case is used. And not all languages end up with
the same answers.

Padraic.

>Thank you all,
>Brandon DW
>