Re: Cases and adpositions

On 2 Aug 02, at 8:16, Nihil Sum wrote:

> Hey, how do you like that: I just found out that Hungarian has 20 (+?)cases.
> Lots of local cases.
Interesting. I've usually seen Hungarian described as having
postpositions -- but the (moderately distantly) related Finnish as
having cases.

And he also wrote:
> Some words in Finnish are said to have MORE than the usual number of
> cases (in addition to the usual 15 I've managed to find such as the
> Superessiivi, Delatiivi, Sublatiivi, Latiivi, Temporaali, Kausatiivi,
> Multiplikatiivi, Distributiivi, T. Distributiivi, Prolatiivi,
> Situatiivi, and Oppositiivi). So there appears to be a bit of a grey
> area as to what is and is not a "case", and what is a suffix or
> particle.
I saw one web site by a Finn which proposed the "adjective test": if
the adjective takes the same case ending as the noun it modifies, it's
a real case; otherwise, it's probably something like an adverb or
adposition or whatever.

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>