Re: Ergative or Vocative?

----- Original Message -----
From: Danny Wier <dawier@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, October 5, 1999 2:41 PM
Subject: Ergative or Vocative?


> Question.  I'm working on some basic grammar in Tech, whatever I can at
this
> time.  So far I have a few noun cases worked out, and I think I'm going to
> decline nouns according to this scheme:
>
>                 'water'     'bride'
> Nominative      weat        k@ul        [wE:t, k@ulw]
> Oblique stem    weta-       k@lu-       [wEta, k@lu]
> Accusative      wetaam      k@luam      [wetam, k@luVm]
> Genitive        wetaun      k@luun      [wetaumw, k@lu:n]
> Gen. of acc.    wetamaun    k@lumaun    [wetamaunw, k@lumaunw]
> Vocative?       weta        k@lu
>
> So for the zero-ending, what would be more likely in a natlang -- a
vocative
> case or an ergative?
I was wondering a similar thing... In Dhak I wanted to have the
subject/nominative/ergative form (haven't decided yet if it will be an
ergative system or not) to be just the stem with no ending on it, but I also
wanted to use the bare stem as the form used when the word is combined with
other words. But I wasn't sure if it really made a lot of sense for the
subject/nom/erg to coincide with the combining form...