Re: Cases and adpositions

----- Original Message -----
From: "JS Bangs" <jaspax@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 10:49 AM
Subject: Re: Cases and adpositions


> Matthew Kehrt sikyal:
>
> > Hey, all.
> > My lang, Evíendadhail currently has a huge number of cases, something
> > like 20-30.  It also has no adpositions.  The way the language currently
> > works, all things that would be adpositions in English or French (my L1
> > and L2) are simply cases.  To put it another way, the language makes no
> > distinction between the two.  The way one would say 'object A is on
> > object B' is not qualitatively different from the way one would mark the
> > subject of a sentence.
> >
> > How unnatural is this?
>
> Not at all.
>
> >  Are there any natlangs that do not make this
> > distinction?
>
> Yes, although I can't name any for certain.  Hungarian comes mighty close
> and I believe has no prepositions. Finnish doesn't properly have
> prepositions, either, but only some helping adverbs that are
> preposition-like in purpose, but not in function.
>
> >  I am considering dropping most of the cases and replacing
> > them with prepositions.  Is this more 'natural'?  Comments would be
> > appreciated. ;-)
>
> Please, please, please don't do that! Keep all of your cases, and screw
> the prepositions. Don't let anyone ever tell you that it's unnatural,
> either.
>
Indeed.  Tabassaran has many cases (up to 60, depending on what you count as
a case). It (obviously) has not prepositions.